// head_to_head
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs GPT-4.1 Mini
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
GPT-4.1 Mini is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
GPT-4.1 Mini does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
- Blended / 1M
- $0.850
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Jul 21, 2026
- Overall score
- 63.9
openai
GPT-4.1 Mini
- Blended / 1M
- $0.700
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- Apr 14, 2025
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
Specs and pricing
| Metric | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | GPT-4.1 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 63.9 | — |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0379 | — |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.850 | $0.700win |
| Input price / 1M | $0.300win | $0.400 |
| Output price / 1M | $2.50 | $1.60win |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.030win | $0.100 |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1.0M |
| Max output tokens | 66Kwin | 33K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite on top, GPT-4.1 Mini below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | GPT-4.1 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $252.56/mo | $202.40/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $282.00/mo | $296.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $288.80/mo | $280.00/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $474.00/mo | $505.00/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $865.00/mo | $1,010/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are cost-constrained
GPT-4.1 Mini
Cheaper on blended list price at $0.700 per million tokens.
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs GPT-4.1 Mini FAQ
Which is better, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or GPT-4.1 Mini?
GPT-4.1 Mini is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. GPT-4.1 Mini does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite cheaper than GPT-4.1 Mini?
GPT-4.1 Mini is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.850 per million tokens and GPT-4.1 Mini at $0.700 — GPT-4.1 Mini is 21% cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite charges $0.300 in and $2.50 out, GPT-4.1 Mini charges $0.400 and $1.60 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or GPT-4.1 Mini have a bigger context window?
They are effectively the same — 1.0M for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 1.0M for GPT-4.1 Mini.
Do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and GPT-4.1 Mini support prompt caching?
Both publish a cached-input rate: $0.030 per million for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and $0.100 for GPT-4.1 Mini, against full input rates of $0.300 and $0.400. On a workload with a long stable prefix — a system prompt, a tool schema, a retrieved corpus — that changes the economics more than the headline price does.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-06-25, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.