The most cost-efficient reasoning model for serious STEM and coding workloads.
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Coding
58
Writing
82
Research
0
Images
72
Value
80
Long Context
Use this when
Developers and analysts who need serious reasoning power for STEM tasks without paying full o4 or o3 prices.
Skip this if
You need fast, conversational responses or primarily creative writing tasks where non-reasoning models like GPT-4o Mini or Claude Haiku 3.5 are faster and cheaper.
Pricing
$1.10/1M in
$4.40/1M out
→0%since May 2026
Context
200k tokens
Speed
Deliberate
o4 Minispecs & pricing
Verified Sep 4, 2026 against the AI Gateway catalog
Priced at $1.1/$4.4 per 1M tokens (input/output), o4 Mini is significantly cheaper than o3 ($10/$40) and o4. Output tokens are 4x the input price, so verbose reasoning traces can add up — use max_completion_tokens limits in production pipelines.
Exceptional math and algorithmic reasoning for its price point, outperforming many larger non-reasoning models
200K context window supports long codebases, legal documents, and multi-document research
Significantly cheaper than o4 and o3 while retaining most of the reasoning chain quality
Reliable structured output and function-calling for agentic and tool-use workflows
Weaknesses
Slower than GPT-4o or Claude Sonnet 4.6 due to internal chain-of-thought processing — not suited for real-time chat
Weaker at open-ended creative writing and nuanced prose compared to non-reasoning counterparts
No native image generation; multimodal input is limited compared to Gemini 3.1 Pro
Real-world use cases
What people actually use o4 Mini for.
Debugging a complex recursive algorithm and explaining the root cause step-by-step
Solving multi-step calculus or statistics problems for an educational platform
Analyzing a 150-page research paper and synthesizing key findings with citations
How o4 Mini compares
The nearest models people weigh against it, and what actually separates them.
vs o3 Mini — Against o3 Mini (OpenAI), o4 Mini lands within a few percent on price. Which one wins depends on whether context depth or latency is your constraint.
vs o3 Mini High — Against o3 Mini High (OpenAI), o4 Mini lands within a few percent on price and answers faster. Which one wins depends on whether context depth or latency is your constraint.
vs GPT-3.5 Turbo (older v0613) — Against GPT-3.5 Turbo (older v0613) (OpenAI), o4 Mini costs about 45% more per token, takes 48.8x the context and answers slower. GPT-3.5 Turbo (older v0613) is the one to check first if the price difference matters more than the ceiling.
Price History
o4 Mini pricing over time
→0% since May 31
90 data points · tracked daily since May 31, 2026
Ready to try it?
Start using o4 Mini
Developers and analysts who need serious reasoning power for STEM tasks without paying full o4 or o3 prices.. Start free — no card required.
OpenAI's o3 Mini is a compact reasoning model optimized for STEM tasks, offering chain-of-thought capabilities at a fraction of the cost of o3. It excels at math, coding, and logical problem-solving while maintaining a large 200K context window.
Verdict
The most cost-efficient way to access serious chain-of-thought reasoning for STEM and coding work.
Quality score
68%
Pricing
$1.10/1M in
$4.40/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
2/5 speed
Context
200k tokens
Supports three reasoning effort settings via the API (low, medium, high), which significantly affect latency and token usage. No vision/image input support. Available via OpenAI API and ChatGPT Plus.
o3 Mini High is OpenAI's compact reasoning model running at maximum reasoning effort, delivering deep chain-of-thought problem-solving in a cost-efficient package. It specializes in STEM tasks — math, coding, and logic — where extended deliberation yields significantly better results than standard chat models.
Verdict
The best bang-for-buck reasoning model for STEM and coding tasks that can tolerate slow response times.
Quality score
66%
Pricing
$1.10/1M in
$4.40/1M out
Speed
Deliberate
1/5 speed
Context
200k tokens
The 'High' suffix refers to the reasoning_effort parameter set to 'high', which increases token usage and latency significantly versus o3 Mini at medium or low effort. Priced at $1.1/$4.4 per million tokens, it is far cheaper than o1 ($15/$60) and full o3, making it attractive for batch workloads.
An older versioned snapshot of GPT-3.5 Turbo (v0613), OpenAI's once-dominant mid-tier language model optimized for fast chat completions and instruction following. This specific checkpoint is frozen in time, predating later capability improvements introduced in subsequent GPT-3.5 Turbo updates.
Verdict
A once-useful workhorse now completely overshadowed by cheaper, more capable successors.
Quality score
31%
Pricing
$1.00/1M in
$2.00/1M out
Speed
Very fast
5/5 speed
Context
4k tokens
This is a pinned legacy snapshot (v0613) and may eventually be deprecated by OpenAI. The 4,095-token context window is its most significant practical limitation. OpenAI's own GPT-4o mini offers drastically more context and better quality at a comparable price — strongly consider migrating.
LegacyBudgetFastShort ContextOpenAI
Best for
High-volume, cost-sensitive text tasks like classification, summarization, and simple Q&A where bleeding-edge quality is not required.
o4 Mini costs $1.1 per million input tokens and $4.4 per million output tokens on the API, with cached input at $0.275 per million. A month of 10M input and 2M output tokens runs about $19.80 at list price, before any batch or caching discounts.
What is the context window of o4 Mini?
o4 Mini has a 200k tokens context window, with up to 100k tokens of output per response. That is the total of prompt plus response the model can hold in one request.
What is the knowledge cutoff of o4 Mini?
o4 Mini's training data runs through May 2024, and the model was released on April 16, 2025. For anything after that date it needs web search or documents in the prompt.
What is o4 Mini best for?
o4 Mini is best for developers and analysts who need serious reasoning power for stem tasks without paying full o4 or o3 prices.. It is a strong fit when that workflow matters more than the tradeoffs around balanced pricing and deliberate speed.
When should I avoid o4 Mini?
You need fast, conversational responses or primarily creative writing tasks where non-reasoning models like GPT-4o Mini or Claude Haiku 3.5 are faster and cheaper.
What is a cheaper alternative to o4 Mini?
GPT-3.5 Turbo (older v0613) (OpenAI) at $1.00/1M/1M input against o4 Mini's $1.10/1M/1M — roughly 45% less per token all in. A once-useful workhorse now completely overshadowed by cheaper, more capable successors. Compare it first if o4 Mini's pricing is the thing stopping you.
What is a faster alternative to o4 Mini?
o3 Mini — deliberate against o4 Mini's deliberate, with 200k tokens of context. Worth the swap when response time is what your users notice rather than the last few points of reasoning depth.
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