Model comparison

o4-mini vs Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 27.9 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #132 Confirmed

Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct Microsoft

27.9

Rank #328 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 8 categories and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in instruction following, where o4-mini leads 75.2 to 47.7.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Chess Puzzles: 26% for o4-mini and 0% for Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct.
  • Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct specifications
o4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
ProviderOpenAIMicrosoft
Noometry Index41.627.9
Released2025-04-162024-04-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K—
Max output100K—
Input $ / M tokens$1.10—
Output $ / M tokens$4.40—
Results tracked6035

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.9 (#127), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.6 (#323)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Coding13681093
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
LiveBench Coding—15.5%
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—
HumanEval+—59.1%
MBPP+—54.2%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o4-mini: 32.6 (#61), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard53.2%—
GDPval25.3%—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#162), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 14.1 (#328)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
Chess Puzzles26%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts13511072
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
CritPt0.6%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
LiveBench Reasoning—26.8%
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
DTBench77.6%—
LiveBench Data Analysis—34.7%
LMCA26.5%—
Adversarial NLI—52.8%
BIG-Bench Hard—71.7%
Epoch Capabilities Index145.64—
ForecastBench61.8—
HellaSwag—76.7%
LiveBench—22.4%
WinoGrande—70.8%

Math o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 40.8 (#89), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.6 (#257)

Math benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Math13891111
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)36.1%—
FrontierMath Tier 44.9%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202581.7%—
Omni-MATH72%—
LiveBench Math—15.7%
MATH Level 597.8%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)24.8%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)6.3%—

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.6 (#91), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 28.5 (#246)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Expert13431045
GPQA Diamond79.6%—
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—
ARC (AI2) Challenge—84.9%
MMLU—68.8%
OpenBookQA—88%
TriviaQA—64%

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#49), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Vision1194—
GeoBench64%—
VPCT57.5%—

Multilingual o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 47.0 (#154), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.3 (#280)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Non-English13371021
LMArena Chinese13541021
LMArena French13641076
LMArena German13361044
LMArena Japanese1308935
LMArena Korean1312905
LMArena Russian13341022
LMArena Spanish13471085

Instruction Following o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 75.2 (#68), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 47.7 (#303)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following13211053
LiveBench Instruction Following—39.1%
IFEval92.8%—

Long Context o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 45.5 (#33), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 31.7 (#276)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Longer Query13151044
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—

Writing & Preference o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 54.0 (#152), Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 27.6 (#300)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi 3 Mini 4k Instruct
LMArena Text13531073
LMArena Creative Writing12941037
LMArena Multi-Turn13501018
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
WildBench85.4%—
LiveBench Language—9.2%

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 27.9 on the Noometry Index.

Is o4-mini or Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct better for coding?

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.9 versus 26.6 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do o4-mini and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. o4-mini has 60 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has 35.

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