What is GPT-4o Mini good for?

Budget text and image tasks with OpenAI's hosted tools. OpenAI recommends it in place of GPT-3.5 Turbo, at the lower-cost end of its lineup.

When is GPT-4o Mini not a good fit?

Extended reasoning and audio input, which it lacks, and anything needing recent knowledge. The GPT-4.1 and GPT-5 families take far longer inputs, and closed weights rule out self-hosting.

What is the cheapest way to run GPT-4o Mini?

The cheapest hosted rate is $0.15 / $0.60 per 1M tokens via OpenAI.

How does GPT-4o Mini compare with GPT-3.5 Turbo?

OpenAI recommends GPT-4o Mini in place of GPT-3.5 Turbo and says it is smarter, cheaper and just as fast, with better long-context performance, and can be fine-tuned or distilled from GPT-4o. GPT-4o Mini lists at 70% less per 1M input tokens and 60% less per 1M output tokens than GPT-3.5 Turbo. It came out 16 months later, has a newer knowledge cutoff (October 2023 against September 2021), a larger context (128K against 16K tokens) and a larger max output (16K against 4K tokens) and takes image input, which GPT-3.5 Turbo does not.

Can I self-host GPT-4o Mini?

No. OpenAI does not publish the weights; GPT-4o Mini is available only through hosted APIs.

GPT-4o Mini

The compact variant of GPT-4o that replaced GPT-3.5 Turbo as OpenAI's recommended budget model.

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List price via OpenAI

Input: $0.15 /1M tokens
Output: $0.60 /1M tokens

4 providers

Key Specifications

Context window: 128K tokens
Max output: 16K tokens
Knowledge cutoff: Oct 2023; web search available
Released: Jul 2024
Inputs: Text, image

Capabilities Show details: Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems. Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON. Web search Search the web for up-to-date information. Code execution Write and execute code in a sandboxed environment. File upload Process uploaded documents, spreadsheets, and other files. MCP Connect to services via Model Context Protocol. Image generation Generate and edit images from text prompts.

Hosted API pricing

Input tokens M Output tokens M

Provider	Input /1M tokens	Output /1M tokens	Cached input /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out
OpenAI Creator	$0.15	$0.60	$0.08	$2.70	View
DigitalOcean	$0.15	$0.60	$0.08	$2.70	View
Azure	$0.15	$0.60	$0.08	$2.70	View
Replicate	$0.15	$0.60		$2.70	View

Heads up: Base-tier, on-demand rates per 1M tokens; cached, batch and long-context tiers excluded. A provider may serve a shorter context or a quantized build than the creator's release. Verify before provisioning. More on how we price.

Similarly priced models

The models nearest GPT-4o Mini by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs GPT-4o Mini
Ministral 3 14B Mistral	$0.20	$0.20	$0.20	256K		−11%
Qwen3.8-Flash Alibaba Cloud	$0.2033	$0.15	$0.47	1M		−10%
Qwen3-VL-8B Alibaba Cloud	$0.2083	$0.15	$0.50	262K		−7%
Qwen-MT-Turbo Alibaba Cloud	$0.215	$0.16	$0.49	16K		−4%
Command R 08-2024 Cohere	$0.225	$0.15	$0.60	128K	Jun 2024	0%
GPT-4o Mini This model OpenAI	$0.225	$0.15	$0.60	128K	Oct 2023
MiniMax-M2.7 MiniMax	$0.225	$0.15	$0.60	205K		0%
Mistral Small 4 Mistral	$0.225	$0.15	$0.60	256K		0%
Qwen3.8-27B Alibaba Cloud	$0.225	$0.17	$0.50	262K		0%
Qwen3-Coder-Next Alibaba Cloud	$0.23	$0.08	$0.98	262K		+2%
Llama 4 Scout Meta	$0.24	$0.16	$0.64	10M	Aug 2024	+7%

Prices are USD per 1M tokens at each model's cheapest listed provider. Blended is the cost of 10M input plus 2M output tokens, spread over the 12M.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is GPT-4o Mini good for?: Budget text and image tasks with OpenAI's hosted tools. OpenAI recommends it in place of GPT-3.5 Turbo, at the lower-cost end of its lineup.
When is GPT-4o Mini not a good fit?: Extended reasoning and audio input, which it lacks, and anything needing recent knowledge. The GPT-4.1 and GPT-5 families take far longer inputs, and closed weights rule out self-hosting.
What is the cheapest way to run GPT-4o Mini?: The cheapest hosted rate is $0.15 / $0.60 per 1M tokens via OpenAI.
How does GPT-4o Mini compare with GPT-3.5 Turbo?: OpenAI recommends GPT-4o Mini in place of GPT-3.5 Turbo and says it is smarter, cheaper and just as fast, with better long-context performance, and can be fine-tuned or distilled from GPT-4o. GPT-4o Mini lists at 70% less per 1M input tokens and 60% less per 1M output tokens than GPT-3.5 Turbo. It came out 16 months later, has a newer knowledge cutoff (October 2023 against September 2021), a larger context (128K against 16K tokens) and a larger max output (16K against 4K tokens) and takes image input, which GPT-3.5 Turbo does not.
Can I self-host GPT-4o Mini?: No. OpenAI does not publish the weights; GPT-4o Mini is available only through hosted APIs.

More from OpenAI

Model	Context	Cutoff	Input /1M	Output /1M
GPT-4.1 Nano	1M	Jun 2024	$0.10	$0.40
GPT-5.6 Luna	1M	Feb 2026	$0.20	$1.20
GPT-5.4 Nano	400K	Aug 2025	$0.20	$1.25
GPT-5 Nano	400K	May 2024	$0.05	$0.40
GPT-5 Mini	400K	May 2024	$0.25	$2.00
GPT-4.1 Mini	1M	Jun 2024	$0.40	$1.60
GPT-3.5 Turbo	16K	Sep 2021	$0.50	$1.50
GPT-OSS-120B Open weights	131K	Jun 2024	$0.04	$0.18