GPT-4.1 Mini vs Grok Code Fast 1

Overview (our 12-test suite): GPT-4.1 Mini wins 5 tests, Grok Code Fast 1 wins 2, and 5 tests tie. Where GPT-4.1 Mini wins: strategic analysis (4 vs 3)—useful for nuanced tradeoffs; constrained rewriting (4 vs 3)—better at tight character-limited rewrites and ranks 6 of 53; long context (5 vs 4)—Mini ties for 1st (tied with 36 others) and is the clear winner for retrieval/accuracy across >30K tokens; persona consistency (5 vs 4)—Mini ties for 1st for character maintenance; multilingual (5 vs 4)—Mini ties for 1st, so multilingual apps benefit. Where Grok Code Fast 1 wins: classification (4 vs 3)—B ties for 1st with 29 others, so Grok is stronger at routing and categorization; agentic planning (5 vs 4)—Grok ties for 1st (14 others) and is better at goal decomposition and agentic workflows (matches its “excels at agentic coding” description). Ties: structured output (4/4), creative problem solving (3/3), tool calling (4/4), faithfulness (4/4), safety calibration (2/2) — these indicate similar behavior on JSON/schema output, tool-selection, adherence to source, and safety refusals. External math benchmarks (supplementary): GPT-4.1 Mini scores 87.3% on MATH Level 5 and 44.7% on AIME 2025 (Epoch AI), which supports its stronger performance on harder math tasks in our tests (ranked 9 of 14 on MATH Level 5 in the provided rankings). Practical meaning: pick Mini when you need long-context, multilingual reliability, constrained rewriting, or persona stability; pick Grok for classification-heavy, agentic coding or when cost per token matters slightly.

Prices in the payload are quoted per mTok (per the dataset's unit). GPT-4.1 Mini: input $0.40/mTok, output $1.60/mTok. Grok Code Fast 1: input $0.20/mTok, output $1.50/mTok. Using a simple 50/50 input:output token split (500 mTok each per 1,000 mTok = 1M tokens): GPT-4.1 Mini costs $200 (input) + $800 (output) = $1,000 per 1M tokens. Grok Code Fast 1 costs $100 + $750 = $850 per 1M tokens. At scale that gap compounds: 10M tokens → Mini $10,000 vs Grok $8,500; 100M tokens → Mini $100,000 vs Grok $85,000. The effective price ratio from the payload is ~1.0667 (Mini ≈ 6.7% more expensive overall). High-volume API customers and teams with tight margins should care about the $150 per 1M-token difference; teams prioritizing long-context, multimodal input, or slightly higher quality on those axes may accept the premium.

Choose GPT-4.1 Mini if you need long-context handling (5/5), multimodal input, stronger constrained-rewrite performance, or better persona consistency—accepting ~6.7% higher cost for those gains. Choose Grok Code Fast 1 if you prioritize agentic planning and classification (agentic planning 5 vs 4; classification 4 vs 3), want visible reasoning traces (quirk: uses_reasoning_tokens), or need the lower per-token spend for high-volume coding or routing workloads.