GPT 5.1 vs o3-mini

GPT 5.1 vs o3-mini: o3-mini is cheaper by 56% on average. GPT 5.1 from Azure OpenAI (272,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. o3-mini from OpenAI (200,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.

Side-by-side cost

Live workload comparison

Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.

3,000
0272,000
400
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
Azure OpenAI
$1,179/mo
Input $1.25/M · Output $10.00/M
o3-miniCheaper
OpenAI
$770/mo
Input $1.10/M · Output $4.40/M
At this workload, o3-mini is 35% cheaper than GPT 5.1 — a savings of $409/month ($4,913/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: o3-mini
  provider: openai
fallback:
  model: gpt-5-1
  provider: azure-openai
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
GPT 5.1 o3-mini
Input price $1.25/M $1.10/M
Output price $10.00/M $4.40/M
Context window 272,000 200,000
Max output 128,000 100,000
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~56% cheaper than GPT 5.1
Larger context
272,000 tokens
More capabilities
5 of 6 capability flags advertised

Benchmark comparison

Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.

Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
GPT 5.1
1,455
o3-mini
MATH-500math
GPT 5.1
o3-mini
97.3%
AIME 2025math
GPT 5.1
94.0%
o3-mini
HumanEvalcode
GPT 5.1
o3-mini
89.0%
GPQA Diamondreasoning⚠ different settings
GPT 5.1
88.1%
o3-mini
77.0%
AIME 2024math
GPT 5.1
o3-mini
87.3%
MMMUmultimodal
GPT 5.1
85.4%
o3-mini
MMLU-Proreasoning
GPT 5.1
o3-mini
79.7%
τ-bench (retail)agent
GPT 5.1
77.9%
o3-mini
SWE-bench Verifiedagent⚠ different settings
GPT 5.1
76.3%
o3-mini
49.3%
LiveCodeBenchcode
GPT 5.1
o3-mini
75.0%
τ-bench (airline)agent
GPT 5.1
67.0%
o3-mini
FrontierMathmath
GPT 5.1
26.7%
o3-mini