GPT-4o Mini vs Grok 3: Detailed Comparison
Choosing between GPT-4o Mini (OpenAI) and
Grok 3 (xAI) comes down to three things:
per-token pricing, context window, and which capability matters most for your workload.
GPT-4o Mini costs $0.15/M input vs
$3.00/M for Grok 3;
context windows are 128K vs
1.0M tokens. Detailed breakdown below.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | GPT-4o Mini | Grok 3 |
|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | xAI |
|---|
| Released | 2024-07-18 | 2025-02-17 |
|---|
| Input price |
$0.15/M |
$3.00/M |
| Output price |
$0.60/M |
$15.00/M |
| Cached input |
$0.0750/M |
— |
| Context window |
128K |
1.0M |
| Max output |
16K |
16K |
| Modalities |
text image |
text image |
| Tokenizer |
o200k_base |
grok |
Capability matrix
| Capability | GPT-4o Mini | Grok 3 |
|---|
| function calling |
Yes |
Yes |
| json mode |
Yes |
Yes |
| vision |
Yes |
Yes |
| streaming |
Yes |
Yes |
| realtime web |
No |
Yes |
Benchmark comparison
Higher is better for all benchmarks shown.
Per-call cost on typical workloads
| Workload (in/out tokens) | GPT-4o Mini | Grok 3 | Cheaper by |
|---|
| Standard chat (1K / 500) |
$0.000450 |
$0.010500 |
GPT-4o Mini by $0.010050 |
| RAG (4K / 500) |
$0.000900 |
$0.019500 |
GPT-4o Mini by $0.018600 |
| Long doc (20K / 1K) |
$0.003600 |
$0.075000 |
GPT-4o Mini by $0.071400 |
| Very long context (100K / 2K) |
$0.015900 |
$0.322500 |
GPT-4o Mini by $0.306600 |
When to choose GPT-4o Mini over Grok 3
- Per-token input cost is 95% lower — meaningful for high-volume workloads.
When to choose Grok 3 over GPT-4o Mini
- Larger context window (1.0M vs 128K).
- Supports realtime web — GPT-4o Mini does not.
Related comparisons