o1-preview vs GPT-4.1 mini

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.

o1-preview is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 83 to 35. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o1-preview's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 93.1 against 23.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is AIME 2024, 96 to 23.1. GPT-4.1 mini does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o1-preview is the reasoning model in the pair, while GPT-4.1 mini is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. GPT-4.1 mini gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for o1-preview.

Quick Verdict

Pick o1-preview if you want the stronger benchmark profile. GPT-4.1 mini only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority or you need the larger 1M context window.

Knowledge

o1-preview

o1-preview

78

GPT-4.1 mini

75.9

92
MMLU
87.5
90
GPQA
64.2
88
SuperGPQA
-
86
OpenBookQA
-
80
MMLU-Pro
-
32
HLE
-

Coding

o1-preview

o1-preview

70.3

GPT-4.1 mini

23.6

86
HumanEval
-
65
SWE-bench Verified
23.6
60
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o1-preview

o1-preview

93.1

GPT-4.1 mini

23.1

94
AIME 2023
-
96
AIME 2024
23.1
95
AIME 2025
-
90
HMMT Feb 2023
-
92
HMMT Feb 2024
-
91
HMMT Feb 2025
-
93
BRUMO 2025
-
94
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

o1-preview
88
SimpleQA
-
86
MuSR
-
93
BBH
-

Instruction Following

GPT-4.1 mini

o1-preview

88

GPT-4.1 mini

88.5

88
IFEval
88.5

Multilingual

o1-preview
90
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o1-preview or GPT-4.1 mini?

o1-preview is ahead overall, 83 to 35. The biggest single separator in this matchup is AIME 2024, where the scores are 96 and 23.1.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o1-preview or GPT-4.1 mini?

o1-preview has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 78 versus 75.9. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o1-preview or GPT-4.1 mini?

o1-preview has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 70.3 versus 23.6. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o1-preview or GPT-4.1 mini?

o1-preview has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 23.1. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o1-preview or GPT-4.1 mini?

GPT-4.1 mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 88.5 versus 88. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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