o1-preview vs o3-mini

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

o1-preview is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 83 to 56. 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 coding, where it averages 70.3 against 49.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 65 to 49.3. o3-mini does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Quick Verdict

Pick o1-preview if you want the stronger benchmark profile. o3-mini only becomes the better choice if instruction following is the priority.

Knowledge

o3-mini

o1-preview

78

o3-mini

82.1

92
MMLU
86.9
90
GPQA
77.2
88
SuperGPQA
-
86
OpenBookQA
-
80
MMLU-Pro
-
32
HLE
-

Coding

o1-preview

o1-preview

70.3

o3-mini

49.3

86
HumanEval
-
65
SWE-bench Verified
49.3
60
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o1-preview

o1-preview

93.1

o3-mini

87.3

94
AIME 2023
-
96
AIME 2024
87.3
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

o3-mini

o1-preview

88

o3-mini

93.9

88
IFEval
93.9

Multilingual

o1-preview
90
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o1-preview or o3-mini?

o1-preview is ahead overall, 83 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 65 and 49.3.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o1-preview or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 78. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o1-preview or o3-mini?

o1-preview has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 70.3 versus 49.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o1-preview or o3-mini?

o1-preview has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 93.1 versus 87.3. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o1-preview or o3-mini?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 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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