GPT-4o-mini vs Grok Code Fast 1

Across our 12 internal benchmark tests, Grok Code Fast 1 wins 4, GPT-4o-mini wins 1, and 7 are ties. Neither model has an overall average score in this payload, so comparisons are per-test.

Where Grok Code Fast 1 wins:

• Agentic planning (5 vs 3): Grok Code Fast 1 ties for 1st among 54 tested models; GPT-4o-mini ranks 42nd of 54. This is a decisive gap for multi-step task workflows, autonomous coding agents, and goal decomposition scenarios.
• Faithfulness (4 vs 3): Grok Code Fast 1 ranks 34th of 55; GPT-4o-mini ranks a notably poor 52nd of 55. For RAG pipelines or any task requiring strict adherence to source material, GPT-4o-mini's score here is a real liability.
• Creative problem solving (3 vs 2): Grok Code Fast 1 ranks 30th of 54; GPT-4o-mini ranks 47th of 54 — near the bottom. Neither model excels here (the median across all tested models is 4), but Grok Code Fast 1 is meaningfully less weak.
• Strategic analysis (3 vs 2): Grok Code Fast 1 ranks 36th of 54; GPT-4o-mini ranks 44th. Both trail the field median of 4, but Grok Code Fast 1 handles nuanced tradeoff reasoning more reliably in our tests.

Where GPT-4o-mini wins:

• Safety calibration (4 vs 2): GPT-4o-mini ranks 6th of 55; Grok Code Fast 1 ranks 12th of 55 but scores only 2 — well below the field median of 2 at the 50th percentile, meaning Grok Code Fast 1 is at the lower end of a low-scoring field. For applications where refusal accuracy matters (consumer-facing tools, regulated industries), this is GPT-4o-mini's clearest advantage.

Ties (7 of 12 tests): Both models score identically on structured output (4/4), constrained rewriting (3/3), tool calling (4/4), classification (4/4, both tied for 1st among 53 models), long context (4/4), persona consistency (4/4), and multilingual (4/4). The tie on tool calling is notable — both rank in the top-18 of 54 models, meaning either handles function calling and agentic API workflows competently.

External benchmarks: GPT-4o-mini has scores on Epoch AI's MATH Level 5 (52.6%) and AIME 2025 (6.9%), ranking 13th of 14 and 21st of 23 respectively among models with those scores in our payload. These are weak math results — both sit well below the field medians of 94.15% and 83.9%. No external benchmark scores are available for Grok Code Fast 1 in this payload.

GPT-4o-mini charges $0.15/MTok input and $0.60/MTok output. Grok Code Fast 1 charges $0.20/MTok input and $1.50/MTok output — 33% more on input and 150% more on output. In practice, output cost dominates at scale. At 1M output tokens/month, GPT-4o-mini costs $0.60 vs $1.50 for Grok Code Fast 1 — a $0.90 gap that's trivial. At 10M tokens/month, that gap becomes $9, still manageable. At 100M tokens/month, you're paying $60 vs $150 — a $90/month difference that starts to matter for budget-conscious teams. Note also that Grok Code Fast 1 uses reasoning tokens (as flagged in its quirks), which can inflate actual token consumption beyond the raw output count depending on reasoning depth. Developers running high-volume, simple-output pipelines will see the cost gap compound quickly; those running lower-volume agentic tasks where output quality drives outcome will likely find Grok Code Fast 1's premium justified. GPT-4o-mini also supports a wider context window for output (16,384 max output tokens vs 10,000 for Grok Code Fast 1), which affects cost modeling for long-generation tasks.

Choose GPT-4o-mini if:

• Safety calibration is a hard requirement — it scores 4 vs Grok Code Fast 1's 2 in our tests, and ranks 6th of 55 models on that dimension.
• You're running at high output volume (100M+ tokens/month) where the $0.90/MTok output cost gap compounds to real budget impact.
• Your tasks are predominantly classification, structured output, or multilingual work where both models tie — and you want the cheaper option.
• You need multimodal input (text + image + file), which GPT-4o-mini supports and Grok Code Fast 1 does not per the payload.
• You want longer max output per call: GPT-4o-mini supports up to 16,384 output tokens vs Grok Code Fast 1's 10,000.

Choose Grok Code Fast 1 if:

• You're building agentic coding workflows or autonomous agents — its agentic planning score of 5 ties for 1st among 54 models, vs GPT-4o-mini's rank of 42nd.
• Source faithfulness matters: Grok Code Fast 1 scores 4 vs GPT-4o-mini's 3, and GPT-4o-mini ranks a concerning 52nd of 55 on faithfulness in our tests.
• You need reasoning traces: Grok Code Fast 1 exposes reasoning tokens in its responses, letting developers inspect and steer its chain of thought — GPT-4o-mini does not offer this per the payload.
• You need a 256K context window vs GPT-4o-mini's 128K — Grok Code Fast 1 doubles the available context for long-document tasks.
• Your use cases involve creative problem solving or strategic analysis, where Grok Code Fast 1 scores higher in both cases.