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

Verdict

Grok 3 Mini is significantly cheaper at $0.30/$0.50 per million tokens vs $2.00/$8.00. GPT-4.1 is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1320 vs 1200. GPT-4.1 ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1290 vs 1220. GPT-4.1 offers a larger 1048K context window vs 128K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureGPT-4.1Grok 3 Mini
ProviderOpenAIxAI
Input Price / 1M tokens$2.00$0.300
Output Price / 1M tokens$8.00$0.500
Context Window1.047576M128K
Max Output Tokens32,76816,384
Arena ELO1,2901,220
Coding ELO1,3201,200
TTFT (ms)260180
Tokens/sec88110
MultimodalYesNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesYes
VisionYesNo
When to Use GPT-4.1

Choose GPT-4.1 when you need: 1m token context window, excellent coding performance, strong instruction following, competitive pricing for its capability. It excels at coding, long-context, agents, general-purpose tasks. Its 1048K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • 1M token context window
  • Excellent coding performance
  • Strong instruction following
  • Competitive pricing for its capability

Best for:

codinglong-contextagentsgeneral-purpose
When to Use Grok 3 Mini

Choose Grok 3 Mini when you need: very affordable pricing, fast response times, good for simple tasks, reasoning capabilities at low cost. It excels at chatbots, cost-sensitive, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Very affordable pricing
  • Fast response times
  • Good for simple tasks
  • Reasoning capabilities at low cost

Best for:

chatbotscost-sensitivelightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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