o4-mini at $1.10/MTok input — the affordable reasoning model. Compare vs Claude Haiku, Gemini Flash Thinking, and o3. When reasoning pays and when it's overkill.
| Model | Input (per 1M tokens) | Output (per 1M tokens) | Cache Read | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| o4-mini Best value reasoning | $1.10 | $4.40 | $0.275 (75% off) | Extended chain-of-thought reasoning |
| o3 | $10.00 | $40.00 | $2.50 (75% off) | ~9× more expensive; use for frontier math/coding |
| Model | Input | Output | Cache Read | Context | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 2.0 Flash Cheapest | $0.10 | $0.40 | $0.025 | 1M tokens | No (fast mode) |
| Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking | $0.10 | $3.50 | $0.025 | 1M tokens | Yes (built-in) |
| GPT-4o-mini | $0.15 | $0.60 | $0.075 | 128k tokens | No |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Best cache | $0.80 | $4.00 | $0.08 (90% off) | 200k tokens | No (fast mode) |
| o4-mini This page | $1.10 | $4.40 | $0.275 (75% off) | 128k tokens | Yes (extended thinking) |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 | $15.00 | $0.30 (90% off) | 200k tokens | Yes (extended thinking) |
Haiku vs o4-mini rule of thumb: If your task doesn't require step-by-step reasoning (classification, extraction, summarization, simple Q&A), Claude Haiku at $0.80/MTok is cheaper and faster. If your task benefits from working through a problem (multi-step math, logic puzzles, code debugging with multiple hypotheses), o4-mini's reasoning mode justifies the $0.30/MTok premium. Test both before committing to either.
For multi-step math, complex code debugging, and formal logic, o4-mini's chain-of-thought reasoning outperforms Claude Haiku significantly. Haiku is fast and cheap but is not a reasoning model — it doesn't do step-by-step thinking before answering.
For high-volume workloads where tasks are simple (classification, extraction, routing), Haiku ($0.80) or Gemini Flash ($0.10) are cheaper. o4-mini also produces longer outputs due to thinking tokens, increasing per-call cost beyond sticker input price.
Claude Haiku has a 200k token context window vs o4-mini's 128k. For long-document analysis or RAG with large retrieved contexts, Haiku handles more text per call. Gemini Flash Thinking has a 1M token context — unmatched for very long contexts.
Claude Haiku's 90% caching discount ($0.08/MTok cache reads) beats o4-mini's 75% off ($0.275/MTok). For apps with large repeated system prompts, Haiku's effective cost with caching can be 3× lower than o4-mini's cached price.
| Scenario | Best Model | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-step math or science problems | o4-mini | Reasoning mode outperforms non-reasoning models on formal step-by-step problems |
| Code debugging (complex) | o4-mini | Extended thinking helps with hypothesis testing across multiple code paths |
| Text classification / extraction | Claude Haiku / Gemini Flash | No reasoning needed; Haiku/Flash are 8× cheaper and faster |
| Summarization of long documents | Claude Haiku (200k) or Gemini Flash (1M) | Larger context windows handle more text; reasoning not needed for summarization |
| Agentic workflows with tool use | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 200k context, 90% caching, stronger instruction following for multi-step agents |
| Frontier math (AIME-level) | o3 | o4-mini may hit quality ceiling on hardest formal reasoning — try o4-mini first |
For a reasoning-enabled coding assistant processing 50M input tokens/month with 15M output tokens:
| Model | Input Cost | Output Cost | Monthly Total | Reasoning? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Flash Thinking | $5 | $52.50 | $57.50 | Yes |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $40 | $60 | $100 | No |
| o4-mini | $55 | $66 | $121 | Yes |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 (no cache) | $150 | $225 | $375 | Yes |
| o3 | $500 | $600 | $1,100 | Yes |
Paste your actual prompt to see exact token counts and compare o4-mini, Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Gemini Flash — with reasoning overhead and cache scenarios.
Open the LLM Pricing Calculator →At $1.10/MTok input and $4.40/MTok output: a typical reasoning call with 1,500 tokens input and 2,000 tokens output (including thinking) costs approximately $0.0017 input + $0.0088 output = ~$0.01 per call. Reasoning models produce more output tokens than non-reasoning models because thinking is included in the output count. For very complex problems with long thinking chains (5,000–10,000 thinking tokens), costs can reach $0.02–$0.04 per call. Measure your actual usage before scaling.
Yes. o4-mini is available through Azure OpenAI Service with enterprise SLAs, data residency, and compliance certifications (SOC 2, HIPAA BAA). Azure pricing mirrors OpenAI direct pricing. For enterprise teams already using Azure infrastructure, deploying o4-mini via Azure OpenAI provides VNet integration, private endpoints, and Azure Active Directory integration that aren't available on the direct OpenAI API.
OpenAI provides trial credits for new accounts, which can be used on o4-mini. Beyond trial credits, o4-mini is pay-per-token at $1.10/MTok input. There is no sustained free tier for o4-mini on the production API. For free experimentation, ChatGPT's web interface uses o4-mini in its reasoning mode (with usage caps on free accounts). For production API access, you'll need a paid OpenAI account with billing enabled.
It depends on your bot's tasks. For a customer support chatbot handling FAQs, order lookups, and simple conversations, Claude Haiku is cheaper and fast enough — reasoning doesn't help here. For a technical support bot that needs to diagnose complex multi-step issues, debug code snippets, or reason about system configurations, o4-mini's thinking mode can meaningfully improve answer quality. Estimate your monthly volume first: at 10M tokens/month, the difference is ~$30 (Haiku) vs ~$55 (o4-mini) — worth testing quality before optimizing cost.
o4-mini is OpenAI's current recommended budget reasoning model, succeeding the earlier o3-mini. They share similar pricing ($1.10/$4.40 MTok) but o4-mini has improved capabilities, especially for code and multimodal tasks. If you see documentation referencing o3-mini, the equivalent current model is o4-mini. OpenAI has been phasing out the -mini naming convention to align with their main model version numbers (o3, o4-mini, etc.).
Also see: OpenAI o3 Pricing · Claude Haiku Pricing · Claude Sonnet Pricing · Gemini API Pricing · LLM Cost Comparison 2026