o3-mini

OpenAI's lightweight reasoning model, released January 2025, and the first of its reasoning models offered to free-tier ChatGPT users.

Context: 200K tokens
Max output: 100K
Cutoff: Oct 2023
Released: Jan 2025

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Hosted API price

List price via OpenAI · per 1M tokens

USD

Input: $1.10 /1M
Output: $4.40 /1M
Hosted by: 3 providers

Hosted API pricing

How we price

Order

Providers are listed cheapest input rate first, then by output rate, a tie going to the creator's own listing. A provider that lists the model without a published rate sits at the end.

Prices

Base-tier, on-demand rates in USD per 1M tokens, converted at ECB reference rates where a provider publishes in another currency. Cached-input and batch rates show only where a provider publishes them. "Cheapest" marks the one provider with the lowest input and output pair; a tie wears no badge.

Cost

Input rate times the input tokens plus output rate times the output tokens, at the monthly volume set above the table. Cached-input, batch, long-context and reasoning-token billing are not modelled.

Transparency and funding

Affiliates: Affiliate links are marked. We may earn a commission if you click them, but commissions never affect the order.

Every provider serving o3-mini, cheapest input first. Set your monthly volume to see what each would bill.

Input M Output M

Every provider serving o3-mini, with its price per 1M input and output tokens and what the volume above would cost
Provider	Input /1M	Output /1M	Cached input /1M	Cost at 10M in + 2M out	Link
OpenAI Creator	$1.10	$4.40	$0.55	$19.80	Visit website
DigitalOcean	$1.10	$4.40	$0.55	$19.80	Visit website
Azure	$1.10	$4.40	$0.55	$19.80	Visit website

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 o3-mini by blended rate, each at its own cheapest provider.

Models priced nearest o3-mini per 1M tokens, each at its cheapest provider
Model	Blended /1M	Input /1M	Output /1M	Context	Cutoff	vs o3-mini
Kimi K2.7 Code Moonshot AI	$1.375	$0.90	$3.75	262K		−17%
Grok 4.20 (Non-Reasoning) xAI	$1.4583	$1.25	$2.50	1M		−12%
Grok 4.20 (Reasoning) xAI	$1.4583	$1.25	$2.50	1M		−12%
Grok 4.3 xAI	$1.4583	$1.25	$2.50	1M		−12%
o4-mini OpenAI	$1.50	$1.00	$4.00	200K	Jun 2024	−9%
o3-mini This model OpenAI	$1.65	$1.10	$4.40	200K	Oct 2023
Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic	$1.6667	$1.00	$5.00	200K	Feb 2025	+1%
GLM-5-Turbo Z.AI	$1.6667	$1.20	$4.00	205K		+1%
GLM-5V-Turbo Z.AI	$1.6667	$1.20	$4.00	205K		+1%
Qwen3-Coder-Plus Alibaba Cloud	$1.6667	$1.00	$5.00	1M		+1%
Qwen3.7-Max Alibaba Cloud	$1.6667	$1.25	$3.75	1M		+1%

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.

Salad

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Run RTX 50-series and 40-series cards without datacenter pricing

Pick a priority level to balance cost against interruptions

Per-second billing, with no charge for cold starts or image pulls

View Pricing

Capabilities

What o3-mini accepts and can do, as published by OpenAI.

Text Accepts and generates natural-language text.
Reasoning Thinks before it answers, always on or as a switchable mode.
Function calling Connect to external tools, APIs, and systems.
Structured output Return responses in structured formats like JSON.
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.

Common questions

What is o3-mini good for?

Text-only reasoning with tools, which OpenAI calls its small reasoning model and the first offered to free-tier ChatGPT users. It sits in the lower half of OpenAI's price range.

When is o3-mini not a good fit?

Image input, since it is text only, and tasks that need web search. Its knowledge is years old, and OpenAI plans to shut it down in October 2026.

What is the cheapest way to run o3-mini?

The cheapest hosted rate is $1.10 / $4.40 per 1M tokens via OpenAI.

How does o3-mini compare with o4-mini?

OpenAI says o4-mini beats o3-mini on non-STEM tasks and data science, not just math and coding, and like o3 it is trained to use tools inside its reasoning and can think with images. Same price and 200K-token context. o3-mini came out 3 months earlier, has an older knowledge cutoff (October 2023 against June 2024) and takes no image input, which o4-mini does.

Can I self-host o3-mini?

No. OpenAI does not publish the weights; o3-mini is available only through hosted APIs.