GPT-4.1 nano vs Grok 2

GPT-4.1 nano

OpenAI

GPT-4.1 nano is OpenAI's smallest member of the GPT-4.1 family, released in April 2025 alongside GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1 mini as the latency-optimized, cost-minimized option for high-throughput applications. Positioned below GPT-4.1 mini in both size and cost, it was designed for use cases where speed and affordability dominate over raw capability — including tool calling, intent classification, short-form instruction following, and retrieval-augmented lookup tasks. Unlike its larger siblings, it supports fine-tuning, making it a practical candidate for task-specific customization at scale without incurring the cost of fine-tuning larger models.

Grok 2

xAI

Grok 2, released by xAI in August 2024, is a large language model with 131K token context window and native image understanding, developed with access to real-time information from the X platform. It features multimodal input capabilities and improved reasoning over its predecessor. Grok 2 targets conversational assistants, image analysis, and real-time information retrieval tasks via the xAI API.