How does GPT-4o mini compare to GPT-3.5 Turbo on price?

Pricing appears on this page and updates as providers adjust their rates. AI Gateway routes traffic through the configured provider.

Does GPT-4o mini support image input?

Yes. It supports vision alongside text, enabling image analysis, document processing, and visual classification at the small-model cost tier.

What benchmark scores did GPT-4o mini achieve?

82.0% on MMLU, outperforming comparable small models and topping GPT-4 on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena chat preference leaderboard at launch.

Is GPT-4o mini suitable for function calling and tool use?

Yes. Function calling is supported, and OpenAI highlighted agentic pipelines that call external APIs as one of the key intended use cases.

What is the context window for GPT-4o mini?

128K tokens, providing ample space for conversation histories, long codebases, and extended document processing.

How does gpt-4o-mini (the alias) differ from gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18?

The alias `gpt-4o-mini` points to the current recommended version and may be updated. The dated snapshot `gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18` is pinned to the specific July 18, 2024 release.

What are typical latency characteristics?

This page shows live throughput and time-to-first-token metrics measured across real AI Gateway traffic.

OpenAI

GPT-4o mini

GPT-4o mini is OpenAI's cost-efficient multimodal model, priced at $0.15 per million input tokens, at reduced cost compared to GPT-3.5 Turbo, while outperforming GPT-4 on chat preference benchmarks and supporting vision and function calling.

View API reference

Input and output price: Prices from: Input $0.15, Output $0.60, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out GPT-4o mini by OpenAI. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

GPT-4o mini

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

Azure

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

16K

1.2 s

81 tps

$0.15/M

$0.60/M

Read$0.08/M

$14/K

07/18/2024

OpenAI

Legal:Terms•Privacy

128K

16K

0.6 s

97 tps

$0.15/M+1 more

$0.60/M+1 more

Read$0.08/M

$10/K

07/18/2024

Getting started

Call GPT-4o mini through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same GPT-4o mini request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
    temperature: 0.5,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `openai/gpt-4o-mini`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. GPT-4o mini supports up to `16,384` output tokens.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 128K-token context window
Image	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as image parts in messages; counts as input tokens
PDF	—	URL, base64, Uint8Array	—	—	Sent as file parts in messages; counts as input tokens

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK openai provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['azure', 'openai'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Image input

Send images alongside text as message parts. Images count as input tokens.

image-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Describe this image.' },
          { type: 'image', image: 'https://example.com/photo.jpg' },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

PDF input

Attach PDFs as file parts. Their contents count as input tokens.

pdf-input.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
    messages: [
      {
        role: 'user',
        content: [
          { type: 'text', text: 'Summarize this document.' },
          {
            type: 'file',
            mediaType: 'application/pdf',
            data: 'https://example.com/document.pdf',
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'openai/gpt-4o-mini',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by OpenAI

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

openai/gpt-6-astra

1.1M

2.9 s

56 tps

$10/M+2 more

$50/M+2 more

Read$1/M

Write$12.50/M

$10/K

09/04/2026

openai/gpt-5.6-luna

1.1M

2.4 s

156 tps

$0.20/M+2 more

$1.20/M+2 more

Read$0.02/M

Write$0.25/M

$10/K

07/09/2026

openai/gpt-5.6-sol

1.1M

2.6 s

69 tps

$2/M+2 more

$10/M+2 more

Read$0.20/M

Write$2.50/M

$10/K

07/09/2026

openai/gpt-5.6-terra

1.1M

2.6 s

94 tps

$2/M+2 more

$12/M+2 more

Read$0.20/M

Write$2.50/M

$10/K

07/09/2026

openai/gpt-5.4

1.1M

3.5 s

88 tps

$2.50/M+2 more

$15/M+2 more

Read$0.25/M

$10/K

03/05/2026

openai/gpt-5-nano

400K

4.4 s

208 tps

$0.05/M

$0.40/M

Read$0.005/M

$14/K

08/07/2025

Copy link to headingAbout GPT-4o mini

GPT-4o mini launched on July 18, 2024 as OpenAI's cost-efficient model, positioned to replace GPT-3.5 Turbo for cost-sensitive deployments while providing meaningfully higher capability. The pricing stands out: $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.6 per million output tokens, at reduced cost compared to GPT-3.5 Turbo. It scored 82.0% on MMLU (Massive Multitask Language Understanding), exceeding GPT-3.5 Turbo, and topped GPT-4 on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena chat preference leaderboard at release.

GPT-4o mini supports vision alongside text, inheriting GPT-4o's multimodal design at the small-model tier. You can run cost-efficient image analysis, document processing, visual classification, and screenshot interpretation without routing to a larger model. Function calling support makes it viable as the reasoning layer in tool-using agents and API-calling pipelines.

OpenAI highlighted four patterns where GPT-4o mini excels: chaining or parallelizing multiple model calls, passing large volumes of context such as full codebases or conversation histories, fast real-time text responses for customer-facing interfaces, and workloads previously blocked by GPT-3.5 Turbo's capability ceiling. The context window of 128K tokens gives it substantial headroom for each of these.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: For applications that chain multiple model calls (classify, then extract, then format), GPT-4o mini's per-call cost makes it practical to run several sequential inferences per user request without the economics becoming prohibitive.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is available for this model. It is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use GPT-4o mini

Best for

Customer support chatbots: Live interaction features requiring fast, affordable multi-turn responses
Multi-call pipelines: Sequential or parallel model calls per user action where per-call cost accumulates quickly
Budget vision workflows: Image description, document OCR assistance, and visual classification at the small-model tier
Function-calling agents: Reliable tool invocation at low cost per call
Large conversation histories: Processing codebases and extended chats within the context window of 128K tokens at minimal cost

Consider alternatives when

Higher quality ceiling: GPT-4o or GPT-4.1 handle complex reasoning, nuanced writing, or difficult coding tasks better
Advanced multimodal processing: More capable vision or audio workloads require a larger model
Deep chain-of-thought: O1-mini is purpose-built for extended reasoning

Copy link to headingConclusion

GPT-4o mini arrived as the model that made it economically viable to embed language model capability into every layer of an application, not just the final user-facing response, but classification, routing, extraction, and tool-use steps throughout a pipeline. Its combination of low price, multimodal input, function calling, and a context window of 128K tokens covers the majority of high-volume production use cases through AI Gateway.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

How does GPT-4o mini compare to GPT-3.5 Turbo on price?
Pricing appears on this page and updates as providers adjust their rates. AI Gateway routes traffic through the configured provider.
Does GPT-4o mini support image input?
Yes. It supports vision alongside text, enabling image analysis, document processing, and visual classification at the small-model cost tier.
What benchmark scores did GPT-4o mini achieve?
82.0% on MMLU, outperforming comparable small models and topping GPT-4 on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena chat preference leaderboard at launch.
Is GPT-4o mini suitable for function calling and tool use?
Yes. Function calling is supported, and OpenAI highlighted agentic pipelines that call external APIs as one of the key intended use cases.
What is the context window for GPT-4o mini?
128K tokens, providing ample space for conversation histories, long codebases, and extended document processing.
How does gpt-4o-mini (the alias) differ from gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18?
The alias gpt-4o-mini points to the current recommended version and may be updated. The dated snapshot gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18 is pinned to the specific July 18, 2024 release.
What are typical latency characteristics?
This page shows live throughput and time-to-first-token metrics measured across real AI Gateway traffic.

Your use is subject to OpenAI's Terms & Privacy Policies.

Agent Stack

Core Platform

Tools

Learn

Build

Explore

GPT-4o mini

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Image input

PDF input

Tool calling

Copy link to headingMore models by OpenAI

Copy link to headingAbout GPT-4o mini

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use GPT-4o mini

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions