GPT-5.4 Nano vs Grok 3 Mini

Across our 12-test suite GPT-5.4 Nano wins 6 benchmarks (structured output, strategic analysis, creative problem solving, safety calibration, agentic planning, multilingual), Grok 3 Mini wins 3 (tool calling, faithfulness, classification), and 3 are ties (constrained rewriting, long context, persona consistency). Detailed calls: - Structured output: GPT-5.4 Nano scores 5 vs Grok 3 Mini 4; GPT-5.4 Nano ranks tied for 1st (tied with 24 others out of 54), so expect better JSON/schema compliance in production. - Strategic analysis: GPT-5.4 Nano 5 vs Grok 3 Mini 3; GPT-5.4 Nano is tied for 1st, which translates to superior nuanced tradeoff reasoning and numeric analysis. - Creative problem solving: 4 (Nano) vs 3 (Grok); Nano ranks 9th of 54, useful for ideation that must be specific and feasible. - Safety calibration: 3 (Nano) vs 2 (Grok); Nano ranks 10th of 55, so it refuses harmful requests more reliably in our testing. - Agentic planning: 4 (Nano) vs 3 (Grok); Nano ranks 16th of 54, better at goal decomposition and failure recovery. - Multilingual: 5 (Nano) vs 4 (Grok); Nano is tied for 1st (with 34 others of 55), so expect stronger non-English parity. - Tool calling: 4 (Nano) vs 5 (Grok); Grok 3 Mini ties for 1st (with 16 others of 54), meaning it better selects functions, arguments and sequencing in tool workflows. - Faithfulness: 4 (Nano) vs 5 (Grok); Grok ties for 1st (with 32 others of 55) — it sticks to source material more consistently in our tests. - Classification: 3 (Nano) vs 4 (Grok); Grok ties for 1st (with 29 others of 53), so it's preferable for routing and tagging. - Ties: both models score 5 on long context (tied for 1st with 36 others), and 5 on persona consistency, meaning both handle 30K+ token retrieval and character maintenance equally well in our suite. Additional data point: GPT-5.4 Nano scores 87.8% on AIME 2025 (Epoch AI), indicating strong performance on that external math benchmark; Grok 3 Mini has no AIME score in the payload.

Costs quoted in the payload are per million tokens: GPT-5.4 Nano input $0.20/M, output $1.25/M; Grok 3 Mini input $0.30/M, output $0.50/M. For a simple equal split (50% input / 50% output) the per-month cost is: 1M tokens — GPT-5.4 Nano $0.73 vs Grok 3 Mini $0.40; 10M — GPT-5.4 Nano $7.25 vs Grok 3 Mini $4.00; 100M — GPT-5.4 Nano $72.50 vs Grok 3 Mini $40.00. If your workload is output-heavy (more generated text than prompt tokens) the gap widens because GPT-5.4 Nano's output cost is $1.25/M. Conversely, if your pipeline is input-heavy (many short replies), Grok's higher input cost ($0.30/M vs $0.20/M) matters less. Organizations at 10M+ tokens/month who generate long outputs should favor Grok 3 Mini for cost-sensitive deployments; teams prioritizing top structured-output quality, multilingual parity, or math reasoning should budget for GPT-5.4 Nano's higher output cost.

Choose GPT-5.4 Nano if you need: - Best-in-class structured output and schema adherence (5/5), superior strategic analysis (5/5), multilingual parity (5/5), long-context retrieval, or strong AIME math (87.8% on AIME 2025, Epoch AI). Budget for higher output costs ($1.25/M). Choose Grok 3 Mini if you need: - Lower output-cost runs, top tool-calling (5/5), top faithfulness (5/5), and best-in-class classification (4/5 tied for 1st). Grok 3 Mini is the value choice when tool integration accuracy and cost-per-generated-token are the priority.