Which model is better: Grok 3 Mini or OpenAI o4-mini?
Grok 3 Mini is 72.7% cheaper for input tokens ($0.30 vs. $1.10 per 1M tokens) and $1.20 vs. $4.40 for output tokens (3.7x cost advantage). In terms of operational performance, Grok 3 Mini delivers lower response latency at 150ms TTFT (530ms faster than OpenAI o4-mini) with 160 vs. 125 tok/s throughput. OpenAI o4-mini leads coding evaluations at 68.1% SWE-bench Verified vs. 54.0% for Grok 3 Mini and 81.4% vs. 68.0% on GPQA Diamond.
Verified daily via automated API latency tests and official documentation.
Zero-Shot RAG Verified
Verified Performance & Unit Economics Delta (12 Dimensions)
Daily synchronized metrics across token pricing, prompt cache economics, latency, throughput, and 5 capability benchmarks.
Metric / Dimension
Grok 3 Mini
OpenAI o4-mini
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$0.30
$1.10
Grok 3 Mini is 3.7x cheaper
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$1.20
$4.40
Grok 3 Mini (72.7% lower)
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$0.080
$0.275
Grok 3 Mini is 3.4x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$0.30
$1.10
Grok 3 Mini is 3.7x cheaper
Context Window (Max Output)
131k (16k out)
205k (100k out)
OpenAI o4-mini (1.6x larger context)
Avg TTFT Response Latency
150ms
680ms
Grok 3 Mini (530ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
160 tok/s
125 tok/s
Grok 3 Mini (+35 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
54%
68.1%
OpenAI o4-mini (+14.1% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
68%
81.4%
OpenAI o4-mini (+13.4% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
80%
85.6%
OpenAI o4-mini (+5.6% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
87%
97.8%
OpenAI o4-mini (+10.8% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
69.2 / 100
63.7 / 100
Grok 3 Mini (+5.5 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
Choose Grok 3 Mini (xAI) for high-speed reasoning model providing rapid answers and code generation with chain-of-thought capabilities at edge pricing — offering a 131k context window, 150ms TTFT, and $0.30/1M input pricing ($0.080/1M cached reads).
Grok 3 Mini is cheaper at $0.30/1M input tokens ($1.20/1M output) compared to $1.10/1M input ($4.40/1M output) for OpenAI o4-mini.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: Grok 3 Mini or OpenAI o4-mini?
Grok 3 Mini delivers faster first-token latency at 150ms TTFT (160 tok/s throughput) compared to 680ms TTFT (125 tok/s) for OpenAI o4-mini.
How do Grok 3 Mini and OpenAI o4-mini compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, Grok 3 Mini scores 54% versus 68.1% for OpenAI o4-mini. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, Grok 3 Mini scores 68% versus 81.4% for OpenAI o4-mini (and 87% vs 97.8% on MATH-500).
When should you choose Grok 3 Mini?
Choose Grok 3 Mini (xAI) for high-speed reasoning model providing rapid answers and code generation with chain-of-thought capabilities at edge pricing — offering a 131k context window, 150ms TTFT, and $0.30/1M input pricing ($0.080/1M cached reads).
When should you choose OpenAI o4-mini?
Choose OpenAI o4-mini (OpenAI) for automated PR review, high-volume agentic coding loops, SQL/data analysis, and visual document reasoning — offering a 204k context window, 680ms TTFT, and $1.10/1M input pricing ($0.275/1M cached reads).
