Grok 3 Mini vs o3-mini

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

o3-mini is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 28 to 23. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-mini's sharpest advantage is in mathematics, where it averages 87.3 against 39.7. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is AIME 2024, 39.7% to 87.3%.

o3-mini is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.30 input / $0.50 output per 1M tokens for Grok 3 Mini. That is roughly 8.8x on output cost alone. o3-mini is the reasoning model in the pair, while Grok 3 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. o3-mini gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Grok 3 Mini.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Grok 3 Mini only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Coding

o3-mini

Grok 3 Mini

41.5

o3-mini

49.3

41.5%
LiveCodeBench
Coming soon
Coming soon
SWE-bench Verified
49.3%

Multimodal & Grounded

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Reasoning

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

21.7%
SimpleQA
Coming soon

Knowledge

o3-mini

Grok 3 Mini

74.1

o3-mini

77.2

66.2%
GPQA
77.2%
78.9%
MMLU-Pro
Coming soon
Coming soon
MMLU
86.9%

Instruction Following

Coming soon

Comparable scores for this category are coming soon. One or both models do not have sourced results here yet.

Coming soon
IFEval
93.9%

Multilingual

Coming soon

Benchmark data for this category is coming soon.

Mathematics

o3-mini

Grok 3 Mini

39.7

o3-mini

87.3

39.7%
AIME 2024
87.3%

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Grok 3 Mini or o3-mini?

o3-mini is ahead overall, 28 to 23. The biggest single separator in this matchup is AIME 2024, where the scores are 39.7% and 87.3%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Grok 3 Mini or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.2 versus 74.1. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Grok 3 Mini or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 49.3 versus 41.5. Grok 3 Mini stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.

Which is better for math, Grok 3 Mini or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 39.7. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 17, 2026

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