Launched by OpenAI in July 2024, the GPT-4o mini model is designed for those who want maximum value for their investment. It’s smarter, faster and can even handle images, with audio and video support just around the corner. Whether you're upgrading from GPT-3.5 or just exploring AI tools, this model delivers serious value without the hefty price tag.
Let’s dive straight into the pros and cons.
Why You’ll Love It: The Pros
- Cost-Efficient: GPT-4o mini is all about getting more for less. It’s priced to be accessible (at just 15 cents per million input tokens and 60 cents per million output tokens), making it over 60% cheaper than the current budget-friendly option – GPT-3.5 Turbo. For businesses, that means more AI magic without draining the budget.
- Smart and Versatile: It’s not just about the savings — this model brings a serious upgrade in performance, outperforming similar small models like Gemini Flash and Claude Haiku on key benchmarks (including MMLU and HumanEval). Whether you’re asking it to solve problems, generate content or handle complex tasks, it’s got you covered with improved reasoning, math and coding skills.
- Multimodal Interaction: This model also supports both text and vision inputs, with future updates already planned to include audio and video. With this range of capabilities, the model becomes even more useful across a variety of business scenarios, from customer support to content creation. And with the updates on the horizon, the possibilities will soon be endless.
- Improved Context Window: More room to talk. With a context window of 128k tokens (which is around 200 pages of text – the exact same as GPT-4o), you can have longer, more detailed conversations with the model on the input side. And you can receive much more information on the output side. This is a big jump from GPT-3.5 (16k tokens or ~25 pages) and ideal for tasks that require a large volume of context, such as analyzing full conversation histories or extensive code bases.
A Few Considerations: The Cons
- Limited Scope Compared to Full GPT-4: While it’s fantastic for most tasks, if you need the absolute highest accuracy, you might want to still consider the full GPT-4o model. GPT-4o mini is powerful, but it’s designed to balance performance with cost.
- Smaller Context Window Compared to Other Models: The 200-page (128k token) context window is an improvement, but if your work demands even more, you might consider other models. Claude Haiku offers a 200k token context window, and Gemini Flash offers 1M.
See It in Action: A Quick Demo
In a broad scenario, imagine you need to create content or interact with customers using both text and images. With the correct prompt, GPT-4o mini can analyze and generate responses based on images. To get more specific…
Let’s say you’re working on a marketing campaign and need creative captions for your product photos. With GPT-4o mini, you can upload an image and ask it to generate engaging text. This not only saves time but could even spark more creative ideas.
Crunching the Numbers: A Sample Cost Calculation
Understanding the cost structure of GPT-4o mini is key when choosing your AI tools. Here’s a quick cost comparison breakdown:
The Base Price Comparison
- GPT-4o mini is priced at $0.150/1M input tokens and $0.600/1M output tokens.
- GPT-4o is priced at $5.00 for 1M input tokens and $15.00 for 1M output tokens.
How Tokens Work
One token is approximately four characters of text. Or, to put it in another way, 1,000 tokens are roughly 750 words. Costs will vary depending on the complexity of your queries.
The Tokenizer tool from OpenAI is a great way to see exactly how many tokens you’re working with.
Comparing Costs
To make it practical, what would be the cost of summarizing 1000 articles similar to this very article you are reading? This article contains ~960 words (~ 5,670 characters). This equates to ~1,349 number of tokens. Assume that the summary would take ~268 tokens.
Cost
- GPT-4o mini: $1
- GPT-4o: $26
- GPT-3.5 Turbo: $2.6
When looking at image analysis from an iPhone 13 Pro (4032px by 3024px), here is the comparison:
- GPT-4o mini: 25,501 tokens
- GPT-4o: 765 tokens
- GPT-3.5 Turbo: N/A
Ignoring the latter, both GPT-4o models cost the same: $0.003825. In other words, for $1 you can analyze 261 photos. However, if both GPT-4o Mini and GPT-4o were to describe those 261 pictures (with each description being 100 words or 400 output tokens), the costs would be:
- GPT-4o Mini: $0.06264
- GPT-4o: $1.566 (again, 25x more expensive)
In summary, GPT-4o mini stands out as the cost-effective solution for businesses looking to maximize their AI capabilities.
Conclusion: Small Model, Smart Choice
If you’re already using GPT-3.5, it’s time to reconsider. GPT-4o mini is bringing a lot more to the table without asking for much more in return. It’s a perfect mix of performance, versatility and affordability, making it a smart choice for businesses looking to up their AI game.
Whether you’re looking to enhance customer interactions, create content or scale AI-driven apps, explore what GPT-4o mini can do and watch how it transforms the way you work. Your wallet (and your projects) will thank you.
