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GPT-4.1 Mini vs Grok 3: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

GPT-4.1 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.40/$1.60 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Grok 3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1290 vs 1230. GPT-4.1 Mini is faster at 115 tokens/sec vs 80 tokens/sec. Grok 3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1300 vs 1240. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4.1 MiniGrok 3
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.400$3.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.60$15.00
Context Window1.047576M128K
Max Output Tokens32,76816,384
Arena ELO1,2401,300
Coding ELO1,2301,290
TTFT (ms)190300
Tokens/sec11580
MultimodalYesYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesYes
When to Use GPT-4.1 Mini

Choose GPT-4.1 Mini when you need: 1m token context window at low cost, great balance of speed and quality, strong coding for a mini model, affordable for high-volume use. It excels at chatbots, long-context, cost-sensitive tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • 1M token context window at low cost
  • Great balance of speed and quality
  • Strong coding for a mini model
  • Affordable for high-volume use

Best for:

chatbotslong-contextcost-sensitive
When to Use Grok 3

Choose Grok 3 when you need: strong benchmark performance, good reasoning capabilities, vision and multimodal support, fast for its capability tier. It excels at general-purpose, reasoning, coding tasks.

Strengths:

  • Strong benchmark performance
  • Good reasoning capabilities
  • Vision and multimodal support
  • Fast for its capability tier

Best for:

general-purposereasoningcoding

Frequently Asked Questions

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