GPT-4.1 nano vs Grok 3

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 3

xAI

Grok 3, released by xAI in February 2025, is a large language model trained on xAI's Colossus supercluster with substantially increased compute over previous generations. It features a 1M token context window, RL-enhanced Think mode for extended reasoning, and demonstrated strong results on mathematics, coding, and scientific benchmarks. Grok 3 targets complex reasoning, real-time information tasks via X platform integration, and agentic workflows via the xAI API.