GPT-4.1 nano vs o1 mini

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.

o1 mini

OpenAI

OpenAI o1 mini, released by OpenAI in September 2024, is a lightweight reasoning model from the o1 family optimized for efficient STEM problem-solving at lower cost and latency. It features a 128K token context window and applies chain-of-thought reasoning specifically tuned for mathematics, science, and coding tasks. o1 mini targets use cases where rapid, cost-efficient reasoning is preferred over the broader capabilities of the full o1 model.