ModelRefs / Phi-4 vs o4 Mini
Phi-4 vs o4 Mini
Phi-4 vs o4 Mini: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
o4 Mini: o4 Mini is OpenAI's efficient reasoning model, adding vision support to the mini reasoning tier for agentic tasks needing both image understanding and step-by-step logic at low cost per task. It is now deprecated: OpenAI gives the o4-mini-2025-04-16 snapshot and the o4-mini alias a shutdown date of 23 October 2026, with gpt-5.6-terra as the substitute.
Phi-4: Microsoft's 14B dense decoder-only open-weight text model, trained on 9.8T tokens with a synthetic-data-centered curriculum and available through the microsoft/phi-4 artifact and Microsoft Foundry.
Context window: o4 Mini accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Phi-4 up to 16,384. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
o4 Mini vs Phi-4 at a glance
| Attribute | o4 Mini | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Released | 2025-04-16 | 2024-12-12 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 16,384 tokens |
| Input price | $1.1/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Output price | $4.4/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Licence | Proprietary | MIT |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text, vision | text |
Benchmarks reported for both
| Benchmark | o4 Mini | Phi-4 | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond (accuracy) | 77.6 | 56.1 | 2024-12-12 |
Each row compares the same benchmark, the same reported metric, and the same task set. Scores are as published by their cited sources on the dates shown. Different runs still use different harnesses and prompts, so treat these as directional evidence rather than a head-to-head result.
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: o4 Mini 63%, Phi-4 100%. Phi-4 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: o4 Mini 79%, Phi-4 61%. o4 Mini leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Phi-4 vs o4 Mini.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Phi-4 or o4 Mini?
Phi-4 and o4 Mini target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Phi-4 cheaper than o4 Mini?
Compare $0.00000 vs $0.00110 on this page.