Which model is better: OpenAI o3-mini or OpenAI o4-mini?
OpenAI o3-mini and OpenAI o4-mini share identical input pricing at $1.10 per 1M tokens ($4.40 vs. $4.40 output). In terms of operational performance, OpenAI o4-mini delivers lower response latency at 680ms TTFT (270ms faster than OpenAI o3-mini) with 125 vs. 98 tok/s throughput. OpenAI o4-mini leads coding evaluations at 68.1% SWE-bench Verified vs. 49.3% for OpenAI o3-mini and 81.4% vs. 79.7% 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
OpenAI o3-mini
OpenAI o4-mini
Net Delta / Advantage
Input Cost / 1M Tokens
$1.10
$1.10
Identical Pricing
Output Cost / 1M Tokens
$4.40
$4.40
Identical Output Pricing
Prompt Cache Read / 1M
$0.550
$0.275
OpenAI o4-mini is 2.0x cheaper
Prompt Cache Write / 1M
$1.10
$1.10
Identical Cache Write Pricing
Context Window (Max Output)
205k (100k out)
205k (100k out)
Equal Context Window
Avg TTFT Response Latency
950ms
680ms
OpenAI o4-mini (270ms faster)
Generation Speed (Throughput)
98 tok/s
125 tok/s
OpenAI o4-mini (+27 tok/s faster)
SWE-bench Verified (Coding)
49.3%
68.1%
OpenAI o4-mini (+18.8% lead)
GPQA Diamond (PhD STEM)
79.7%
81.4%
OpenAI o4-mini (+1.7% lead)
MMLU-Pro (Multi-Discipline)
83.2%
85.6%
OpenAI o4-mini (+2.4% lead)
MATH-500 (Quantitative Logic)
97.9%
97.8%
OpenAI o3-mini (+0.1% lead)
Inference Value Score (IVR)
59.7 / 100
63.7 / 100
OpenAI o4-mini (+4 pts)
Interactive Monthly Token Economics & ROI Forecaster
Model production workloads across prompt, completion, and cached context tokens, or switch models on the fly.
Choose OpenAI o3-mini (OpenAI) for competitive math reasoning, automated unit test generation, and structured logic pipelines — offering a 204k context window, 950ms TTFT, and $1.10/1M input pricing ($0.550/1M cached reads).
Which is cheaper: OpenAI o3-mini or OpenAI o4-mini?
Both OpenAI o3-mini and OpenAI o4-mini share identical input pricing at $1.10/1M tokens.
Which model has lower TTFT latency and higher tok/s throughput: OpenAI o3-mini or OpenAI o4-mini?
OpenAI o4-mini delivers faster first-token latency at 680ms TTFT (125 tok/s throughput) compared to 950ms TTFT (98 tok/s) for OpenAI o3-mini.
How do OpenAI o3-mini and OpenAI o4-mini compare on SWE-bench coding and GPQA Diamond reasoning?
On SWE-bench Verified software engineering, OpenAI o3-mini scores 49.3% versus 68.1% for OpenAI o4-mini. On GPQA Diamond graduate-level STEM reasoning, OpenAI o3-mini scores 79.7% versus 81.4% for OpenAI o4-mini (and 97.9% vs 97.8% on MATH-500).
When should you choose OpenAI o3-mini?
Choose OpenAI o3-mini (OpenAI) for competitive math reasoning, automated unit test generation, and structured logic pipelines — offering a 204k context window, 950ms TTFT, and $1.10/1M input pricing ($0.550/1M 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).
