Is o4 Mini a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats o4 Mini on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026
As of Sep 23, 2026, o4 Mini is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GPT-5.6 Luna scores 76.7 higher and costs 77% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GPT-5.6 Luna is both better and cheaper than o4 Mini: 76.7 points higher on LMArena and 77% less per million tokens, $1.48 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1353.2
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$1.93/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1429.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.450/M
o4 Mini takes image, text, file, returns up to 100,000 tokens from a 200,000-token context, and is listed by 1 seller.
Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: 5 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. o4 Mini scores 1353.2 at $1.93 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1429.9 +76.7 | $0.450/M | 77% |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | 1412.1 +58.9 | $1.69/M | 12% |
| Grok 4.3 | 1397.7 +44.5 | $1.56/M | 19% |
| GPT-5 Mini | 1373.0 +19.8 | $0.688/M | 64% |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | 1372.9 +19.7 | $0.463/M | 76% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1494.7 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1490.5 | $1.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1476.1 | $1.50/M | max output |
| GLM 5.3 | 1475.1 | $1.29/M | image, file |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.9 | $0.237/M | file |
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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