Side-by-side benchmark comparison across knowledge, coding, math, and reasoning.
Sibling matchup inside the o3 family.
o3 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 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 76 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
o3's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 56 against 49.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is GPQA, 87 to 77.2. o3-mini does hit back in instruction following, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
o3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $10.00 input / $40.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $1.10 input / $4.40 output per 1M tokens for o3-mini. That is roughly 9.1x on output cost alone.
o3 makes more sense if coding is the priority, while o3-mini is the cleaner fit if instruction following is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
o3
73.3
o3-mini
82.1
o3
56
o3-mini
49.3
o3
87.1
o3-mini
87.3
o3
85
o3-mini
93.9
o3 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 is ahead overall 76 to 56.
o3-mini has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.1 versus 73.3. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
o3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 56 versus 49.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
o3-mini has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 87.3 versus 87.1. Inside this category, AIME 2024 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
o3-mini has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 85. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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