Which is cheaper, o4-mini or Phi-4?

Phi-4 is cheaper for both input ($0.07/M tokens) and output ($0.14/M tokens), compared to o4-mini at $1.10/$4.40 per million tokens.

Which is faster, o4-mini or Phi-4?

Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec with a TTFT of 100ms, compared to o4-mini at 60 tokens/sec and 1200ms TTFT.

Which has a bigger context window, o4-mini or Phi-4?

o4-mini has a 200K token context window, which is larger Phi-4's 16K context window.

Which is better for coding, o4-mini or Phi-4?

o4-mini has a higher coding ELO of 1380 compared to Phi-4's 1130, making it the stronger choice for code generation and programming tasks.

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

Verdict

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.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	o4-mini	Phi-4
Provider	OpenAI	Microsoft
Input Price / 1M tokens	$1.10	$0.070
Output Price / 1M tokens	$4.40	$0.140
Context Window	200K	16.384K
Max Output Tokens	100,000	4,096
Arena ELO	1,350	1,150
Coding ELO	1,380	1,130
TTFT (ms)	1,200	100
Tokens/sec	60	160
Multimodal	Yes	No
JSON Mode	Yes	Yes
Function Calling	Yes	No
Vision	Yes	No

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:

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

Best for:

reasoningmathcodingscience

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

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

Side-by-Side Comparison

Frequently Asked Questions

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