What Is o4-mini?
In early 2025, OpenAI unveiled o4-mini, the latest addition to its o-series of models. Designed for lightning-fast AI reasoning, o4-mini packs state-of-the-art multimodal capabilities into a compact, cost-efficient package. Whether you’re a developer building real-time chatbots, a business delivering image-driven customer support, or a curious technologist exploring next-gen AI, o4-mini and its high-effort sibling, o4-mini-high, offer an irresistible combination of speed, affordability, and versatility. For a broader look at OpenAI’s model lineup, check out our GPT-4: The Ultimate Guide to Features, API & Pricing.
Key Takeaways
- o4-mini delivers GPT-4o Mini-level reasoning at just $1.10/M input tokens and $4.40/M output tokens.
- o4-mini-high is the same underlying model run in “high gear” for deeper multi-step logic.
- Supports text, image, audio, vision, and code inputs, plus streaming, function calling, and ChatGPT endpoints.
- Offers a 200,000-token context window with up to 100,000 output tokens.
- Comparable benchmark scores to o3 at ~10× lower cost, with ~80% faster response times.
What Is o4-mini?
At its core, o4-mini is OpenAI’s distilled version of the flagship GPT-4o architecture. It inherits the “omni”—or o—design that unifies text, audio, vision, and code reasoning into a single neural network. By leveraging model distillation, o4-mini retains most of the reasoning power of the larger GPT-4o while slashing compute requirements and cost.
- Compact footprint: Fewer parameters than GPT-4o, yet still delivers advanced chain-of-thought reasoning.
- Wide context: Up to 200,000 tokens in a single prompt—ideal for long documents, books, or data streams.
- Multimodal input: Send screenshots, voice recordings, or code snippets alongside text.
- Rich output: Receive structured JSON for tooling, generated images, or even synthesized audio.
o4-mini vs. o4-mini-high
In most ChatGPT interfaces you’ll see a toggle for “o4-mini” and “o4-mini-high.” They share the same weights, but o4-mini-high allocates extra internal compute—think of it as “sport mode” for your AI:
- Higher quality on multi-step logic and complex coding tasks
- Longer inference time, slightly slower but more precise
- Increased token usage per request
Use o4-mini for rapid-fire chats, live customer support, or high-volume pipelines. Switch to o4-mini-high when you need impeccable accuracy in financial modeling, scientific reasoning, or intricate data visualizations.
Pricing & Deployment Efficiency
One of o4-mini’s defining features is its 10× cost reduction versus the prior o3 model:
| Model | Input Cost (per M tokens) | Output Cost (per M tokens) |
|---|---|---|
| o3 | $10.00 | $40.00 |
| o4-mini | $1.10 | $4.40 |
At these rates, processing 100,000 input tokens costs just $0.11, making large-scale deployments feasible. Both variants are available:
- API: Use model IDs
o4-miniando4-mini-highon the Chat Completions and Responses endpoints. - ChatGPT: Select from the model picker if you have a Plus, Pro, or Team plan. Free users can experiment in “Think mode.” Curious how GPT-4 pricing compares? Read our GPT-4: The Ultimate Guide to Features, API & Pricing.
Deep-Dive Benchmarks
Despite its slimmed-down architecture, o4-mini holds its own on industry benchmarks:
Math & Logic
- AIME 2024: 93.4% (o4-mini) vs. 91.6% (o3)
- AIME 2025: 92.7% vs. 88.9%
Coding
- Codeforces ELO: 2719 (o4-mini) vs. 2706 (o3)
- SWE-Bench: 68.1% vs. 69.1%
- Aider Polyglot: 68.9% whole, 58.2% diff (o4-mini-high)
Multimodal Reasoning
- MMMU: 81.6% vs. 82.9%
- MathVista: 84.3% vs. 86.8%
- CharXiv: 72.0% vs. 78.6%
General QA
- GPQA Diamond: 81.4% vs. 83.3%
- Humanity’s Last Exam: 17.7% w/tools vs. 24.9% (o3)
These scores show that o4-mini delivers GPT-4o-class performance on complex tasks, while the o4-mini-high mode further tightens accuracy on the toughest challenges.
Real-World Use Cases
1. Real-Time Customer Support
- Voice + Vision: A user snaps a photo of a broken device; o4-mini analyzes the image, hears the user’s voice description, and offers troubleshooting steps in text or synthesized audio.
2. AI-Augmented Coding IDE
- Live Autocomplete: Integrate o4-mini into your IDE for instant code suggestions, refactorings, and error fixes, powered by function calling and structured JSON outputs.
3. Data-Driven Business Dashboards
- Report Summaries: Feed o4-mini a CSV or spreadsheet; ask for trend analysis, anomaly detection, or generate a chart—all in one call, leveraging its multimodal context window.
4. Accessible Learning Tools
- Interactive Textbooks: Upload pages of a PDF; students can ask follow-up questions in natural language, with the model referring back to any paragraph in a 200K-token context.
How to Test o4-mini: A Step-by-Step Guide
- Basic Math Check
“`from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI()
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model=”o4-mini”,
messages=[{“role”:”user”,”content”:”What is 9,121 – 4,567?”}],
tools=[“calculator”]
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)
- Creative Code Generation
- In ChatGPT, select o4-mini-high and ask: “Build an endless runner game in p5.js with pixelated dinosaurs and press-to-start logic.”
- Multimodal Analysis
- Via API or ChatGPT upload an image of a bar chart and prompt: “Explain the key trends in this quarterly revenue chart.”
How to Access and Integrate
OpenAI API
“`curl https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H “Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY” \
-d ‘{
“model”: “o4-mini-high”,
“messages”: [{“role”:”user”,”content”:”Summarize my 100-page PDF report”}]
}’
- ChatGPT App
- Open model selector → choose o4-mini or o4-mini-high.
- Use the microphone icon to speak, or click “+” to upload images.
FAQs
Q: Can I fine-tune o4-mini?
A: Not yet—fine-tuning is not currently supported.
Q: Which tasks should use o4-mini-high?
A: Complex workflows such as multi-step coding, financial forecasting, and intricate vision reasoning benefit most.
Q: How does o4-mini compare to GPT-4 Turbo?
A: It’s roughly 50% cheaper, ~80% faster in response, and fully multimodal—versus GPT-4 Turbo’s text-only pipeline.
Q: What tools does o4-mini support?
A: Python execution, web browsing, image and audio analysis, function calling, and streaming responses.
Conclusion
o4-mini and o4-mini-high mark a new era in multimodal AI, democratizing GPT-4o-level capabilities at unmatched speed and affordability. By weaving together text, audio, image, and code reasoning in a single efficient model, they empower developers and businesses to build smarter applications without breaking the bank. Explore o4-mini today and see how you can outpace the competition with next-gen AI.
Ready to get started? Sign up for OpenAI API and unlock o4-mini’s full potential.
If you’re teaching or learning with ChatGPT, don’t miss our post on 100 Powerful ChatGPT Prompts for Students Writing Essays in 2025.
