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

Verdict

GPT-4.1 Nano is significantly cheaper at $0.10/$0.40 per million tokens vs $3.00/$15.00. Grok 3 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1290 vs 1150. GPT-4.1 Nano is faster at 150 tokens/sec vs 80 tokens/sec. Grok 3 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1300 vs 1180. GPT-4.1 Nano offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4.1 NanoGrok 3
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.100$3.00
Output Price / 1M tokens$0.400$15.00
Context Window1.047576M128K
Max Output Tokens32,76816,384
Arena ELO1,1801,300
Coding ELO1,1501,290
TTFT (ms)130300
Tokens/sec15080
MultimodalYesYes
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesYes
When to Use GPT-4.1 Nano

Choose GPT-4.1 Nano when you need: ultra-low pricing, 1m context window, very fast inference, ideal for simple tasks at scale. It excels at chatbots, classification, cost-sensitive, high-volume 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:

  • Ultra-low pricing
  • 1M context window
  • Very fast inference
  • Ideal for simple tasks at scale

Best for:

chatbotsclassificationcost-sensitivehigh-volume
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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