o4-mini vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Pricing verified Apr 20, 2026By LLMversusUpdated June 14, 2026View methodology

⚡ Quick Answer

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $1.10/$4.40. o4-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1380 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 60 tokens/sec. o4-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1350 vs 1150. o4-mini offers a larger 200K context window vs 16K.

Updated: April 20, 2026 · ✓ Pricing verified

Side-by-Side Comparison

Featureo4-miniPhi-4
ProviderOpenAIMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$1.10$0.065
Output Price / 1M tokens$4.40$0.140
Context Window
128K
16.384K
Max Output Tokens
32,768
4,096
Arena ELO
1,260
1,150
Coding ELO
1,270
1,130
TTFT (ms)
180
100
Tokens/sec
105
160
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionNoNo
When to Use o4-mini

Choose o4-mini when you need: excellent reasoning and math capabilities, strong coding performance, affordable for a reasoning model, large output window. It excels at reasoning, math, coding, science tasks. Its 200K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Affordable
  • Fast
  • Good reasoning

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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