ModelRefs / o4 Mini by OpenAI — Benchmarks, Pricing & Review (2026)

o4 Mini by OpenAI — Benchmarks, Pricing & Review (2026)

o4 Mini (OpenAI): o4 Mini is OpenAI's next-generation efficient reasoning model adding vision support to the mini reasoning tier. It is optimized for agentic…

What this reference supports

o4 Mini is a smaller OpenAI reasoning model for workloads that need deliberate reasoning with a different latency and cost profile from o3. Its suitability depends on task structure, reasoning settings, tool configuration, and the quality threshold measured on representative cases.

o4 Mini is attributed to OpenAI in ModelRefs' canonical registry. Tracked modalities: Text, Image input where supported. Primary use cases considered on ModelRefs: Reasoning-heavy classification, analysis, and coding; High-volume tasks that can validate a smaller reasoning model.

This ModelRefs profile is Provisional and pending review — decision-support material, not a final or universal ranking. Confirm current behavior, access, pricing, limits, licensing, and lifecycle in OpenAI's own documentation, and evaluate o4 Mini on representative workloads before implementation.

Benchmark & Evaluation

ModelRefs currently has partial, narrow benchmark coverage for o4 Mini. Treat the available benchmark evidence as one input to the decision, not a guarantee that o4 Mini is the strongest option for your workload, and evaluate it on representative workloads before selecting it.

  • Provider-reported benchmark results should be interpreted with methodology, dataset, prompting, tool, sampling, and recency limitations in mind.
  • G.18 registers OpenAI's unqualified simple-evals GPQA row for the o4-mini alias. The separately labeled high- and low-reasoning rows remain outside this canonical claim, and eligibility stays Partial.

Implementation considerations

  • Compare o4 Mini with both o3 and non-reasoning alternatives on the same evaluation set.
  • Test reasoning effort, tool use, response length, latency, and failure escalation.
  • Hosted through supported OpenAI API products.
  • Confirm current model status, snapshots, endpoints, quotas, and rates.

Risks and limitations

  • Outputs can be incorrect or unsuitable for the intended task; use task-specific evaluation, grounding, and human review where consequences are material.
  • API availability, model aliases, rate limits, data controls, regions, and prices are mutable and differ by product channel.

Source coverage

This reference is Provisional. Model behavior, access, pricing, limits, and lifecycle can change; verify the linked provider documentation and run task-specific evaluations before implementation.

Known coverage gaps:

  • Independent reproduction and broader benchmark coverage remain incomplete.
  • Current endpoint and reasoning-configuration coverage is not attached.

Sources

Continue your research

Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to o4 Mini by OpenAI — Benchmarks, Pricing & Review (2026).