OpenAI
Alternatives

Best cheaper alternatives to o3-mini

Looking for a cheaper or smarter replacement for o3-mini by OpenAI? We compared every LLM model with verifiable pricing on real input/output cost, context window, intelligence and modalities. 18 options are meaningfully cheaper.

Category: LLM Intelligence 66 200K context
Google
Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B97% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
Google
Gemini 1.5 Flash93% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
Google
Gemini 2.0 Flash91% CHEAPER
Google
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
GPT 4.1 Mini84% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
GPT 4.1 Nano84% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueLarger contextMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
o384% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (78 vs 66)More modalitiesSame category
Mistral AI
Ministral 3 8B92% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
Meta
Llama 3.2 11B Vision97% CHEAPER
Meta
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
Meta
Llama 3.2 90B Vision88% CHEAPER
Meta
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
o4 Mini84% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (70 vs 66)More modalitiesSame category
DeepSeek
DeepSeek-R1 (Reasoner)87% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSmarter (73 vs 66)Same category
OpenAI
GPT-4o84% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
OpenAI
GPT-4o Mini84% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueMore modalitiesSame category
Mistral AI
Mistral Small92% CHEAPER
Mistral AI
Better valueSame category
Meta
Llama 3.1 8B97% CHEAPER
Meta
Better valueSame category
DeepSeek
DeepSeek-V3 (Chat)94% CHEAPER
DeepSeek
Better valueSame category
Alibaba Cloud
Qwen Turbo95% CHEAPER
Alibaba Cloud
Better valueSame category
OpenAI
o184% CHEAPER
OpenAI
Better valueSmarter (71 vs 66)Same category

Costs are normalised to a blended 1M-token workload (or per-unit price for non-token models) using each model's latest verified pricing. Models with pricing under review are excluded from recommendations.