o3-pro vs o3-mini

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

Sibling matchup inside the o3 family.

o3-pro and o3-mini sit in the same o3 family. This page is less about two unrelated model lineages and more about how the siblings trade off on benchmark shape, token costs, and practical limits like context window.

o3-pro is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 77 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o3-pro's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 56.7 against 49.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is IFEval, 82 to 93.9. 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

o3-pro makes more sense if coding is the priority, while o3-mini is the cleaner fit if instruction following is the priority.

Knowledge

o3-mini

o3-pro

75

o3-mini

82.1

88
MMLU
86.9
89
GPQA
77.2
87
SuperGPQA
-
85
OpenBookQA
-
75
MMLU-Pro
-
26
HLE
-

Coding

o3-pro

o3-pro

56.7

o3-mini

49.3

80
HumanEval
-
46
SWE-bench Verified
49.3
44
LiveCodeBench
-

Mathematics

o3-pro

o3-pro

89

o3-mini

87.3

90
AIME 2023
-
92
AIME 2024
87.3
91
AIME 2025
-
86
HMMT Feb 2023
-
88
HMMT Feb 2024
-
87
HMMT Feb 2025
-
89
BRUMO 2025
-
89
MATH-500
-

Reasoning

o3-pro
86
SimpleQA
-
84
MuSR
-
89
BBH
-

Instruction Following

o3-mini

o3-pro

82

o3-mini

93.9

82
IFEval
93.9

Multilingual

o3-pro
83
MGSM
-

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3-pro or o3-mini?

o3-pro and o3-mini are sibling variants in the o3 family, so the right pick depends on whether you value the better benchmark line, cheaper tokens, or the larger context window. o3-pro is ahead overall 77 to 56.

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

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 75. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3-pro or o3-mini?

o3-pro has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 56.7 versus 49.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3-pro or o3-mini?

o3-pro has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 89 versus 87.3. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 82. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 9, 2026

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