GPT-4.1 vs GPT-4o-mini

Across our 12-test suite GPT-4.1 wins most tasks: faithfulness 5 vs 3 (GPT-4.1 tied for 1st of 55, GPT-4o-mini ranks 52/55), long context 5 vs 4 (GPT-4.1 tied for 1st, GPT-4o-mini rank 38/55), tool calling 5 vs 4 (GPT-4.1 tied for 1st, GPT-4o-mini rank 18/54), strategic analysis 5 vs 2 (GPT-4.1 tied for 1st, GPT-4o-mini rank 44/54), constrained rewriting 5 vs 3 (GPT-4.1 tied for 1st, GPT-4o-mini rank 31/53), agentic planning 4 vs 3 (GPT-4.1 rank 16/54 vs GPT-4o-mini rank 42/54), multilingual 5 vs 4 (GPT-4.1 tied for 1st, GPT-4o-mini rank 36/55), creative problem solving 3 vs 2, and persona consistency 5 vs 4. GPT-4o-mini wins safety calibration 4 vs 1 (GPT-4o-mini rank 6/55, GPT-4.1 rank 32/55) — meaning GPT-4o-mini is more likely to refuse or correctly handle harmful requests in our tests. Structured_output and classification tie (4 vs 4) — both models matched on JSON/schema compliance and categorization. External benchmarks (Epoch AI) supplement these results: GPT-4.1 scores 48.5% on SWE-bench Verified (Epoch AI) and 83% on MATH Level 5, while GPT-4o-mini scores 52.6% on MATH Level 5; on AIME 2025 GPT-4.1 scores 38.3% vs GPT-4o-mini 6.9% (all Epoch AI). Those external numbers imply GPT-4.1 is stronger on advanced math and coding-resolution tasks we tested; GPT-4o-mini is weaker on complex math but still competitive on some coding math benchmarks.

GPT-4.1 costs input $2 and output $8 per 1k tokens; GPT-4o-mini costs input $0.15 and output $0.6 per 1k tokens (price ratio 13.33x). At scale, using equal input+output volumes: 1M input + 1M output tokens/month costs $10,000 on GPT-4.1 vs $750 on GPT-4o-mini. For 10M in+out tokens: $100,000 vs $7,500. For 100M in+out: $1,000,000 vs $75,000. Teams with millions of monthly tokens (chat apps, high-volume APIs, ingest+indexing pipelines) should care—GPT-4o-mini reduces spend by an order of magnitude; teams needing best long-context reasoning, tool-calling accuracy, or faithfulness may justify GPT-4.1's higher cost.

Choose GPT-4.1 if you need top-tier long-context reasoning, tool calling, faithfulness, multilingual parity, or best-in-class strategic analysis (examples: multi-file code generation, 30K+ token document analysis, agentic workflows with functions). Choose GPT-4o-mini if you need a pragmatic, low-cost model for high-volume chat, classification, or safety-sensitive front-line filtering where budget drives architecture (examples: large-scale customer chat, routing/classification pipelines, safety gatekeeping).