Which model is better: GPT-4.5 or OpenAI o3-mini?

**OpenAI o3-mini delivers vastly superior cost efficiency and coding performance over GPT-4.5.** Costing $1.10 per 1M input tokens versus $75.00, o3-mini is 98.5% cheaper and leads SWE-bench at 49.3% versus 38.0%. For output, o3-mini costs $4.40 versus $150
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.

Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta

Daily synchronized metrics from synthetic latency endpoints and benchmark evaluations.

Metric / Dimension GPT-4.5 OpenAI o3-mini Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens $75.00 $1.10 OpenAI o3-mini is 68.2x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens $150.00 $4.40 OpenAI o3-mini (97.1% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M $37.500 $0.550 OpenAI o3-mini is 68.2x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M $75.00 $1.10 OpenAI o3-mini is 68.2x cheaper
Avg TTFT Response Latency 850ms 1250ms GPT-4.5 (+400ms faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding) 38% 49.3% OpenAI o3-mini (+11.3% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR) 22.1 / 100 58.2 / 100 OpenAI o3-mini (+36.1 pts)

Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster

Model your expected production workload across prompt (input) and completion (output) tokens with prompt caching economics.

Live Calculation Engine
10.0M Tokens
100K 50M 250M 500M+
2.5M Tokens
100K 10M 50M 100M+

Estimated Monthly Spend

GPT-4.5 $1,125.00

$75.00/1M in · $150.00/1M out

Prompt Cache: $37.500/1M read · $75.00/1M write

OpenAI o3-mini $22.00

$1.10/1M in · $4.40/1M out

Prompt Cache: $0.550/1M read · $1.10/1M write

Projected Monthly Cost Reduction
$1,103.00 / mo
(98.0% lower cost with OpenAI o3-mini)
A

When to Choose GPT-4.5

Choose GPT-4.5 when you need Deep world-knowledge synthesis, high-EQ conversational nuance, and long-form creative generation requiring massive pretraining breadth. and have an infrastructure budget aligned with $75.00/1M tokens.

B

When to Choose OpenAI o3-mini

Choose OpenAI o3-mini when you need High-throughput STEM reasoning, competitive coding, and low-latency algorithmic problem solving with configurable thinking effort. and prioritize OpenAI ecosystem integration at $1.10/1M tokens.

Related Questions & Decision Factors

Which is cheaper: GPT-4.5 or OpenAI o3-mini?

OpenAI o3-mini is cheaper at $1.10/1M input tokens compared to $75.00/1M for GPT-4.5.

Which model has lower latency: GPT-4.5 or OpenAI o3-mini?

GPT-4.5 delivers faster response times with an average TTFT of 850ms vs 1250ms for OpenAI o3-mini.

When should you choose GPT-4.5?

Choose GPT-4.5 when you need Deep world-knowledge synthesis, high-EQ conversational nuance, and long-form creative generation requiring massive pretraining breadth. and have an infrastructure budget aligned with $75.00/1M tokens.

When should you choose OpenAI o3-mini?

Choose OpenAI o3-mini when you need High-throughput STEM reasoning, competitive coding, and low-latency algorithmic problem solving with configurable thinking effort. and prioritize OpenAI ecosystem integration at $1.10/1M tokens.

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