o3-mini vs Seed 1.6

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

o3-mini is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 71 to 65. 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 knowledge, where it averages 70.8 against 56.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMLU, 86.9 to 73. Seed 1.6 does hit back in multilingual, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

o3-mini is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.25 input / $2.00 output per 1M tokens for Seed 1.6. That is roughly 2.2x on output cost alone. Seed 1.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for o3-mini.

Quick Verdict

Pick o3-mini if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Seed 1.6 only becomes the better choice if multilingual is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

o3-mini

o3-mini

66.6

Seed 1.6

62.3

67
Terminal-Bench 2.0
63
74
BrowseComp
67
61
OSWorld-Verified
58

Coding

o3-mini

o3-mini

55.6

Seed 1.6

42.4

49.3
SWE-bench Verified
46
57
SWE-bench Pro
46
Coming soon
HumanEval
64
Coming soon
LiveCodeBench
38

Multimodal & Grounded

Seed 1.6

o3-mini

74.4

Seed 1.6

79.6

73
MMMU-Pro
80
76
OfficeQA Pro
79

Reasoning

o3-mini

o3-mini

81.1

Seed 1.6

74.5

82
LongBench v2
77
80
MRCRv2
78
Coming soon
SimpleQA
69
Coming soon
MuSR
69
Coming soon
BBH
86

Knowledge

o3-mini

o3-mini

70.8

Seed 1.6

56.4

86.9
MMLU
73
77.2
GPQA
72
66
FrontierScience
68
Coming soon
SuperGPQA
70
Coming soon
OpenBookQA
68
Coming soon
MMLU-Pro
75
Coming soon
HLE
11

Instruction Following

o3-mini

o3-mini

93.9

Seed 1.6

87

93.9
IFEval
87

Multilingual

Seed 1.6

o3-mini

73

Seed 1.6

83.4

73
MMLU-ProX
81
Coming soon
MGSM
88

Mathematics

o3-mini

o3-mini

87.3

Seed 1.6

75.9

87.3
AIME 2024
74
Coming soon
AIME 2023
72
Coming soon
AIME 2025
73
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2023
68
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2024
70
Coming soon
HMMT Feb 2025
69
Coming soon
BRUMO 2025
71
Coming soon
MATH-500
82

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini is ahead overall, 71 to 65. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMLU, where the scores are 86.9 and 73.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 70.8 versus 56.4. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 55.6 versus 42.4. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 75.9. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 81.1 versus 74.5. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.6 versus 62.3. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 74.4. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 87. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o3-mini or Seed 1.6?

Seed 1.6 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 83.4 versus 73. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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