o4 Mini alternatives
Match · Updated July 2026
The closest alternative to o4 Mini is Claude Opus 4 — comparable intelligence (25.5 vs 25.6); for a cheaper option, Claude Sonnet 5 (batch) runs $1.00/M vs $1.10/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
Closest match
Cheaper alternatives
claude-sonnet-5:batch
$1.00/M input · 53.4 intel
gpt-5.6-luna
$0.500/M input · 51.2 intel
glm-5.2
$0.679/M input · 51.1 intel
gemini-3.5-flash:batch
$0.750/M input · 50.2 intel
gemini-3.6-flash:batch
$0.750/M input · 50.1 intel
gemini-3.1-pro-preview:batch
$1.00/M input · 46.5 intel
Smarter alternatives
gemini-2.5-pro
25.8 intel · $1.25/M
gemini-2.5-pro:batch
25.8 intel · $0.625/M
step-3.5-flash
26.0 intel · $0.100/M
ling-2.6-1t
26.1 intel · $0.075/M
claude-opus-4.1
28.2 intel · $15.00/M
claude-opus-4.1:batch
28.2 intel · $7.50/M
Open-source alternatives
kimi-k3
57.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
glm-5.2
51.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3
44.4 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3:batch
44.4 intel · open weights · 524K ctx
deepseek-v4-pro
44.3 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
kimi-k2.6
44.2 intel · open weights · 262K ctx
Frequently asked
What is the best alternative to o4 Mini?
Claude Opus 4 is the closest alternative to o4 Mini, with an Intelligence Index of 25.5 (o4 Mini scores 25.6) at $15.00 per million input tokens.
Is there a cheaper alternative to o4 Mini?
Yes — Claude Sonnet 5 (batch) costs $1.00 per million input tokens versus $1.10 for o4 Mini, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Is there an open-source alternative to o4 Mini?
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to o4 Mini — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.