# Command R vs o3-mini

> o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Command R costs 7.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/command-r-vs-o3-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 26

## Summary

- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Command R scores higher in 1 category and o3-mini in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where o3-mini leads 75.1 to 58.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is LiveBench Reasoning: 21.9% for Command R and 89.6% for o3-mini.
- Command R is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- o3-mini accepts more context: 200K tokens versus 128K.
- Command R has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 31.4 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 272 | 212 |
| Context | 128K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Command R: 29.3 (#306)
- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | 17.9% | 82.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1169 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 37.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 45.2% | — |
| CadEval | — | 54% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Command R: —
- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |

## Reasoning

- Command R: 13.8 (#331)
- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Reasoning | 21.9% | 89.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1164 | 1366 |
| DTBench | 46.4% | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 33.3% | 70.6% |
| LMCA | 9.2% | 19% |
| LiveBench | 27.5% | 75.9% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |

## Math

- Command R: 28.0 (#246)
- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | 19.4% | 77.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1155 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Command R: 31.0 (#221)
- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1138 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
| MMLU | 65.2% | — |

## Multilingual

- Command R: 35.7 (#245)
- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1174 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1182 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1162 | 1334 |
| LMArena German | 1176 | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1143 | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | 1163 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1174 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1151 | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Command R: 58.1 (#261)
- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 55.6% | 84.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1167 | 1337 |

## Long Context

- Command R: 36.3 (#231)
- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1198 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |

## Writing & Preference

- Command R: 38.2 (#254)
- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

| Benchmark | Command R | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1187 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1170 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1163 | 1320 |
| LiveBench Language | 16.7% | 50.7% |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |

## FAQ

### Is Command R better than o3-mini?

o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Command R costs 7.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Command R or o3-mini?

Command R is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

### Is Command R or o3-mini better for coding?

o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 29.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

o3-mini does, with 200K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Command R and o3-mini share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Command R has 29 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.