GPT-4 Turbo vs o1-mini
Side-by-side comparison of GPT-4 Turbo (OpenAI) and o1-mini (OpenAI). Exact API pricing per million tokens, context windows, output speed, and total cost on real-world prompts.
Specifications
| Spec | GPT-4 Turbo | o1-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | OpenAI |
| Model id | gpt-4-turbo | o1-mini |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $10.00 | $3.00 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $30.00 | $12.00 |
| Context window | 128,000 | 128,000 |
| Output speed (tokens/sec) | ~40 | ~65 |
| Tokenizer encoding | cl100k_base | o200k_base |
Cost on real prompts
Total cost = (input tokens × input price) + (output tokens × output price). Numbers below use the exact pricing tables published by each provider.
| Scenario | Input | Output | GPT-4 Turbo | o1-mini | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short question + answer | 50 | 150 | $0.005000 | $0.001950 | o1-mini |
| Code review on one file | 500 | 1,500 | $0.050000 | $0.019500 | o1-mini |
| Long document summary | 5,000 | 500 | $0.065000 | $0.021000 | o1-mini |
| Heavy reasoning task | 2,000 | 8,000 | $0.260000 | $0.102000 | o1-mini |
| Full codebase analysis | 50,000 | 10,000 | $0.800000 | $0.270000 | o1-mini |
Want the exact cost for your prompt instead of these examples? Open the cost calculator pre-loaded with both models →
When to pick which
Heuristics derived from the spec table above. Always validate on your own prompts before committing — these are starting points, not verdicts.
Pick GPT-4 Turbo for
No clear advantage on the data points we measure. Compare on your actual prompts.
Pick o1-mini for
- •output-heavy workloads — o1-mini is meaningfully cheaper per output token
- •input-heavy workloads — o1-mini is cheaper per input token
- •latency-sensitive UX — o1-mini streams faster (~65 vs ~40 tok/s)
- •complex multi-step reasoning — o1-mini uses chain-of-thought internally
Switching between them
For most use cases, switching providers means updating the model id and the request shape if the providers differ. Within the same provider, it's usually a single-line change.
From GPT-4 Turbo to o1-mini
# Before
model = "gpt-4-turbo"
# After
model = "o1-mini"If the providers differ (OpenAI vs OpenAI), you'll also need to swap the SDK / endpoint URL. Cross-provider migrations usually take 30 minutes to a few hours depending on how many features (streaming, function calling, tool use) you depend on.
Calculate cost on your own prompt
The examples above use generic input/output ratios. For an exact comparison, paste your real prompt into the calculator — it counts tokens with the right tokenizer for each model and shows side-by-side cost.
Open the calculator with both models →