// alternatives · October 2026
o3 Mini alternatives
Cheaper models that come close, budget substitutes, and the cheapest step up — chosen on published LiveBench scores and live list price, never on our opinion. Every model here supports tool calling, as o3 Mini does.
LiveBench hasn't published a run for o3 Mini. The strongest benchmarked model at a similar or lower price is GPT-6.1 Terra, scoring 77.8 overall.
o3 Mini: no published LiveBench run, $1.93 per 1M blended tokens, about $924.00/mo for a RAG assistant.
Benchmarked models at or below its price
o3 Mini has no published LiveBench run, so these are the highest-scoring benchmarked models priced no more than 25% above it — a known quantity to test against.
| Model | Overall | vs o3 Mini | Blended / 1M | RAG assistant | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6.1 Terraopenai 4% more expensive. Head to head → | 77.8 | — | $2.00 | $720.00/mo | 1.1M |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017deepseek 73% cheaper. Head to head → | 74.0 | — | $0.525−73% | $194.40/mo | 1.0M |
| Claude Haiku 5.5anthropic 90% cheaper. Head to head → | 69.8 | — | $0.200−90% | $74.00/mo | 1M |
| MiMo-V2.6-Proxiaomi 72% cheaper. Head to head → | 68.5 | — | $0.544−72% | $227.64/mo | 1.1M |
| MiniMax M3.1 Flashminimax 86% cheaper. Head to head → | 66.9 | — | $0.262−86% | $102.00/mo | 1.0M |
| GPT-6 Lunaopenai 90% cheaper. Head to head → | 64.6 | — | $0.200−90% | $74.00/mo | 1.1M |
o3 Mini alternatives FAQ
What is the best alternative to o3 Mini?
GPT-6.1 Terra. 4% more expensive. Every suggestion supports tool calling, like o3 Mini.
How alternatives are chosen
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25. Only models with a published run are suggested on quality; a missing model means “not evaluated”, not “worse”.
- Prices — live list prices from OpenRouter, blended 3:1 input:output. Monthly figures price a RAG assistant with the published cached-input rate where there is one.
- Same job — suggestions must support every capability o3 Mini has among tool calling and image input. Other listings of the same model (free or batch tiers) are variants, not alternatives, and are left out.
A few points on a public benchmark can hide large differences on your own tasks. Shortlist here, then decide with an eval — how to build one.