The closest alternative to GPT-4.1 Mini is Mistral Large 3 2512 — comparable intelligence (22.8 vs 22.9); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.400/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Mistral Large 3 2512 is the closest alternative to GPT-4.1 Mini, with an Intelligence Index of 22.8 (GPT-4.1 Mini scores 22.9) at $0.500 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.400 for GPT-4.1 Mini, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to GPT-4.1 Mini — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.