GPT-4o mini vs o1-mini

Side-by-side comparison of GPT-4o mini (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-4o mini o1-mini
Provider OpenAI OpenAI
Model id gpt-4o-mini o1-mini
Input price (per 1M tokens) $0.15 $3.00
Output price (per 1M tokens) $0.60 $12.00
Context window 128,000 128,000
Output speed (tokens/sec) ~130 ~65
Tokenizer encoding o200k_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-4o mini o1-mini Cheaper
Short question + answer 50 150 $0.000097 $0.001950 GPT-4o mini
Code review on one file 500 1,500 $0.000975 $0.019500 GPT-4o mini
Long document summary 5,000 500 $0.001050 $0.021000 GPT-4o mini
Heavy reasoning task 2,000 8,000 $0.005100 $0.102000 GPT-4o mini
Full codebase analysis 50,000 10,000 $0.013500 $0.270000 GPT-4o 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-4o mini for

  • output-heavy workloads (long-form generation, code, summaries) — gpt-4o-mini is meaningfully cheaper per output token
  • input-heavy workloads (long context, RAG, document QA) — gpt-4o-mini is cheaper per input token
  • latency-sensitive UX (chat, autocompletion) — gpt-4o-mini streams faster (~130 vs ~65 tok/s)

Pick o1-mini for

  • 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-4o mini to o1-mini

# Before
model = "gpt-4o-mini"

# 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 →