Small & Fast Microsoft Models

Quick answer · Updated June 2026

The small, fast Microsoft model is Phi 4 — the efficient tier at 79 tokens/sec and $0.065 per million input tokens. It trades a few points of raw intelligence for speed and cost, the right call for high-volume, latency-sensitive work. Phi 4 Mini Instruct (7 t/s) is next.

79 t/sSpeed

10.4Intelligence

$0.065Input /M

16KContext

Compact, efficient models — the small/mini/flash/haiku tier — ranked by output speed. These trade a little raw intelligence for low cost and high throughput, which is the right tradeoff for chat, classification, extraction and other high-volume work.

Frequently asked

What is the smallest, fastest Microsoft model?

What's a good alternative to Phi 4?

Phi 4 Mini Instruct (7 t/s) is the closest alternative on this metric. See the full ranking above for the tradeoffs.

How many Microsoft models are there?

modelgrep tracks 3 Microsoft models with live benchmarks, speed, latency and per-provider pricing, led on intelligence by Phi 4. 2 of them qualify for this ranking.

More Microsoft rankings

Microsoft: Smartest LLMs Microsoft: Best LLMs for Coding Microsoft: Best LLMs for Design & Frontend Microsoft: Fastest LLMs Microsoft: Lowest-Latency LLMs Microsoft: Cheapest LLMs Microsoft: Best Free LLMs Microsoft: Best Reasoning LLMs Microsoft: Best Vision LLMs Microsoft: Best LLMs for Agents Microsoft: Best Open-Source LLMs Microsoft: Longest-Context LLMs

All rankings

Small & Fast LLMs Smartest LLMs Best LLMs for Coding Best LLMs for Design & Frontend Fastest LLMs Lowest-Latency LLMs Cheapest LLMs Best Free LLMs Best Reasoning LLMs Best Vision LLMs Best LLMs for Agents Best Open-Source LLMs Longest-Context LLMs