o1-mini
A smaller, faster o1-class model for STEM-style reasoning where full o1 latency or cost is prohibitive.
Newer version: o3-mini
Provider
OpenAI
Model family
OpenAI o-series
Reasoning LLM
Cost tier
Mini
Status
Deprecated
Why teams choose it
Broad capability envelope
Useful when the same stack must cover chat, multimodal inputs, tooling, or structured-output shapes without juggling many SKUs.
Long-context analysis
Helps teams summarize, compare, and extract insights from long documents without losing important nuance.
Coding and tools
Works well for code assistance, tool calling, and agent workflows where instructions must stay consistent across steps.
Cost-efficient routing
Useful as part of a routing stack where cheap models handle drafts and confirmations and this tier handles genuinely hard passages.
Tradeoffs to know
- Can still be slower than non-reasoning chat models.
- May underperform o1 on hardest tasks—keep escalation paths.
When not to use this
- Not ideal for sprawling research or brittle multi-hop reasoning unless you constrain scope tightly.
- Avoid for regulated or high-stakes outputs without evaluations that mimic your tooling, data, and review process.
- Promote traffic to heavier tiers inside the family when workflows need richer tools and longer horizons.
Technical specs
- Inputs
- text
- Outputs
- text
- Capabilities
- reasoning, math
- License
- See vendor
- Model string
o1-mini
Benchmarks
No benchmark data yet.
OpenAI o-series family lineup
Current models
Previous versions
Compare with
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o3-mini
Current · o3-mini · mini
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o1-mini FAQ
What is o1-mini?
A smaller, faster o1-class model for STEM-style reasoning where full o1 latency or cost is prohibitive. Use it when you need better chain-of-thought style behavior than GPT-4o mini but not full o1 depth.
When does o1-mini fit best?
STEM tutoring with budget limits
What should teams watch out for with o1-mini?
Can still be slower than non-reasoning chat models.
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