Model comparison

o3-mini vs o4-mini

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 42 shared benchmarks.

o3-mini OpenAI

36.7

Rank #212 Confirmed

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 42 benchmarks with published results for both. o3-mini scores higher in 0 categories and o4-mini in 9 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where o4-mini leads 40.8 to 28.1.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Fiction.LiveBench: 50% for o3-mini and 77.8% for o4-mini.
  • Both cost about the same: $1.10 input and $4.40 output per million tokens.

Side by side

o3-mini and o4-mini specifications
o3-minio4-mini
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Noometry Index36.741.6
Released2024-12-202025-04-16
WeightsProprietaryProprietary
Context window200K200K
Max output100K100K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$1.10
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$4.40
Results tracked5160

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

o3-mini: 40.8 (#132), o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
Aider Polyglot60.4%72%
GSO1.3%3.6%
WeirdML43.7%52.6%
LMArena Coding13781368
CadEval54%62%
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—45%
SciCode39.8%—
LiveBench Coding82.7%—
ALE-Bench—826.17
AlgoTune—1.72

Agentic & Tool Use o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 29.6 (#84), o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—53.2%
GDPval—25.3%
Cybench22.5%—
METR Time Horizons—63.9%

Reasoning o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 16.3 (#305), o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
ARC-AGI-23%6.1%
SimpleBench22.8%38.7%
ARC-AGI-134.5%58.7%
CritPt0.3%0.6%
Chess Puzzles17%26%
LMArena Hard Prompts13661351
Mystery Game Puzzles7%5%
DTBench68.8%77.6%
LMCA19%26.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index140.34145.64
ForecastBench59.661.8
Kagi LLM Benchmark—67.6%
EnigmaEval—9.2%
LiveBench Reasoning89.6%—
LiveBench Data Analysis70.6%—
LiveBench75.9%—

Math o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 28.1 (#244), o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)18.6%36.1%
FrontierMath Tier 40%4.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202576.9%81.7%
LMArena Math13961389
MATH Level 596.5%97.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)12.4%24.8%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%6.3%
Omni-MATH—72%
LiveBench Math77.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 38.3 (#146), o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
GPQA Diamond77%79.6%
SimpleQA Verified15.3%19.6%
Confabulations17.9%15.8%
LMArena Expert13641343
Humanity's Last Exam—18.1%
MMLU-Pro—82%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—18.6%
GPQA (HELM)—73.5%

Multimodal Not comparable

o3-mini: —, o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
LMArena Vision—1194
GeoBench—64%
VPCT—57.5%

Multilingual o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 45.7 (#164), o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
LMArena Non-English13191337
LMArena Chinese13791354
LMArena French13341364
LMArena German13031336
LMArena Japanese12861308
LMArena Korean13141312
LMArena Russian13041334
LMArena Spanish13211347

Instruction Following Too close to call

o3-mini: 75.1 (#72), o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
LMArena Instruction Following13371321
LiveBench Instruction Following84.4%—
IFEval—92.8%

Long Context o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 33.8 (#256), o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
Fiction.LiveBench50%77.8%
LMArena Longer Query13431315

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

o3-mini: 50.3 (#182), o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko3-minio4-mini
LMArena Text13371353
LMArena Creative Writing12861294
Short-Story Creative Writing61.7%75%
LMArena Multi-Turn13201350
WildBench—85.4%
LiveBench Language50.7%—

Frequently asked questions

Is o3-mini better than o4-mini?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, o3-mini or o4-mini?

o4-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

Is o3-mini or o4-mini better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (40.8 vs 40.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 200K tokens.

How many benchmarks do o3-mini and o4-mini share?

42 benchmarks have published results for both models. o3-mini has 51 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.

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