Model comparison

o4-mini vs Phi-4 Mini

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 30.4 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 Mini costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #119 Confirmed

Phi-4 Mini Microsoft

30.4

Rank #280 Reported

Summary

  • They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. o4-mini scores higher in 3 categories and Phi-4 Mini in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where o4-mini leads 43.5 to 24.8.
  • Phi-4 Mini is cheaper at $0.075 / $0.30 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o4-mini.
  • o4-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 128K.
  • Phi-4 Mini has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

o4-mini and Phi-4 Mini specifications
o4-miniPhi-4 Mini
ProviderOpenAIMicrosoft
Noometry Index41.630.4
Released2025-04-162024-12-11
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K128K
Max output100K4K
Input $ / M tokens$1.10$0.075
Output $ / M tokens$4.40$0.30
Results tracked603

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Category by category

Coding o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 41.6 (#110), Phi-4 Mini: 27.6 (#312)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)45%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
SciCode—10.8%
GSO3.6%—
WeirdML52.6%—
LMArena Coding1369—
CadEval62%—
ALE-Bench826.17—
AlgoTune1.72—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

o4-mini: 32.3 (#57), Phi-4 Mini: —

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

Reasoning o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 24.6 (#143), Phi-4 Mini: 21.7 (#190)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
CritPt0.6%0%
ARC-AGI-26.1%—
SimpleBench38.7%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark67.6%—
ARC-AGI-158.7%—
Chess Puzzles26%—
EnigmaEval9.2%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1351—
Mystery Game Puzzles5%—
DTBench77.6%—
LMCA26.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index145.63—
ForecastBench61.8—

Math Not comparable

o4-mini: 40.2 (#79), Phi-4 Mini: —

Knowledge o4-mini leads

o4-mini: 43.5 (#83), Phi-4 Mini: 24.8 (#261)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
Vectara Hallucination Rate18.6%23.5%
GPQA Diamond79.6%—
Humanity's Last Exam18.1%—
SimpleQA Verified19.6%—
MMLU-Pro82%—
Confabulations15.8%—
GPQA (HELM)73.5%—
LMArena Expert1344—

Multimodal Not comparable

o4-mini: 39.5 (#46), Phi-4 Mini: —

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

Multilingual Not comparable

o4-mini: 47.2 (#149), Phi-4 Mini: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
LMArena Non-English1336—
LMArena Chinese1355—
LMArena French1362—
LMArena German1336—
LMArena Japanese1308—
LMArena Korean1313—
LMArena Russian1334—
LMArena Spanish1346—

Instruction Following Not comparable

o4-mini: 75.4 (#63), Phi-4 Mini: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
IFEval92.8%—
LMArena Instruction Following1321—

Long Context Not comparable

o4-mini: 45.5 (#31), Phi-4 Mini: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
Fiction.LiveBench77.8%—
LMArena Longer Query1315—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

o4-mini: 54.2 (#148), Phi-4 Mini: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmarko4-miniPhi-4 Mini
LMArena Text1353—
LMArena Creative Writing1294—
Short-Story Creative Writing75%—
WildBench85.4%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1350—

Frequently asked questions

Is o4-mini better than Phi-4 Mini?

o4-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.6 to 30.4 on the Noometry Index. Phi-4 Mini costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o4-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, o4-mini or Phi-4 Mini?

Phi-4 Mini is cheaper. It lists at $0.075 per million input tokens and $0.30 per million output tokens; o4-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

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

o4-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.6 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

o4-mini does, with 200K tokens against 128K.

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

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

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