# o3-pro vs o4-mini

> o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index. o4-mini costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/o3-pro-vs-o4-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. o3-pro scores higher in 3 categories and o4-mini in 2 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where o3-pro leads 72.2 to 45.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Fiction.LiveBench: 97.2% for o3-pro and 77.8% for o4-mini.
- o4-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $20 / $80 for o3-pro.

## Snapshot

| | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 42.9 | 41.6 |
| Rank | 105 | 132 |
| Context | 200K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $20 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $80 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- o3-pro: 55.5 (#24)
- o4-mini: 40.9 (#127)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 84.9% | 72% |
| WeirdML | 58.2% | 52.6% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 45% |
| GSO | — | 3.6% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1368 |
| CadEval | — | 62% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 826.17 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.72 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- o3-pro: —
- o4-mini: 32.6 (#61)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 53.2% |
| GDPval | — | 25.3% |
| METR Time Horizons | — | 63.9% |

## Reasoning

- o3-pro: 23.8 (#171)
- o4-mini: 24.6 (#162)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 4.9% | 6.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 72.1% | 67.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 59.3% | 58.7% |
| DTBench | 86.9% | 77.6% |
| LMCA | 38.5% | 26.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 147.42 | 145.64 |
| SimpleBench | — | 38.7% |
| CritPt | — | 0.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 26% |
| EnigmaEval | — | 9.2% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1351 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| ForecastBench | — | 61.8 |

## Math

- o3-pro: —
- o4-mini: 40.8 (#89)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 36.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 4.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 81.7% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 72% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1389 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 24.8% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 6.3% |

## Knowledge

- o3-pro: 29.5 (#238)
- o4-mini: 43.6 (#91)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Confabulations | 14.2% | 15.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 23.3% | 18.6% |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 79.6% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 18.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 19.6% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 82% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 73.5% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1343 |

## Multimodal

- o3-pro: —
- o4-mini: 40.2 (#49)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1194 |
| GeoBench | — | 64% |
| VPCT | — | 57.5% |

## Multilingual

- o3-pro: —
- o4-mini: 47.0 (#154)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1354 |
| LMArena French | — | 1364 |
| LMArena German | — | 1336 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1308 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1312 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1334 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1347 |

## Instruction Following

- o3-pro: —
- o4-mini: 75.2 (#68)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 92.8% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1321 |

## Long Context

- o3-pro: 72.2 (#1)
- o4-mini: 45.5 (#33)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 97.2% | 77.8% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1315 |

## Writing & Preference

- o3-pro: 57.1 (#133)
- o4-mini: 54.0 (#152)

| Benchmark | o3-pro | o4-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 84.4% | 75% |
| LMArena Text | — | 1353 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1294 |
| WildBench | — | 85.4% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1350 |

## FAQ

### Is o3-pro better than o4-mini?

o3-pro is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index. o4-mini costs 18× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-pro's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, o3-pro or o4-mini?

o4-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; o3-pro lists at $20 and $80.

### Is o3-pro or o4-mini better for coding?

o3-pro scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 40.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 200K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do o3-pro and o4-mini share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. o3-pro has 12 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.