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GPT-4.1 Mini vs o4-mini: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

GPT-4.1 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.40/$1.60 per million tokens vs $1.10/$4.40. o4-mini is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1380 vs 1230. GPT-4.1 Mini is faster at 115 tokens/sec vs 60 tokens/sec. o4-mini ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1350 vs 1240. GPT-4.1 Mini offers a larger 1048K context window vs 200K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4.1 Minio4-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.400$1.10
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.60$4.40
Context Window1.047576M200K
Max Output Tokens32,768100,000
Arena ELO1,2401,350
Coding ELO1,2301,380
TTFT (ms)1901,200
Tokens/sec11560
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 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.

Strengths:

  • Excellent reasoning and math capabilities
  • Strong coding performance
  • Affordable for a reasoning model
  • Large output window

Best for:

reasoningmathcodingscience

Frequently Asked Questions

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