GPT-5 mini alternatives
8 models of comparable capability, ranked by blended token price. GPT-5 mini stays in the table, highlighted, as the baseline.
List prices checked
Ranked by blended token price
Cheapest first, at three input tokens per output token.
| # | Model | Provider | Input | Output | Blended | vs GPT-5 mini | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DeepSeek-V4-Flash | DeepSeek | $0.140 | $0.280 | $0.175 | 3.9× cheaper | 1M |
| 2 | Grok 3 mini | xAI | $0.300 | $0.500 | $0.350 | 2× cheaper | 131K |
| 3 | Codestral | Mistral AI | $0.300 | $0.900 | $0.450 | 1.5× cheaper | 262K |
| 4 | GPT-5 miniyou are here | OpenAI | $0.250 | $2.00 | $0.688 | — | 400K |
| 5 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.300 | $2.50 | $0.850 | 1.3× dearer | 1M | |
| 6 | OpenAI o4-mini | OpenAI | $1.10 | $4.40 | $1.93 | 2.5× dearer | 200K |
| 7 | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Anthropic | $1.00 | $5.00 | $2.00 | 3.3× dearer | 200K |
| 8 | GPT-4.1 | OpenAI | $2.00 | $8.00 | $3.50 | 5× dearer | 1M |
| 9 | GPT-4o | OpenAI | $2.50 | $10.00 | $4.38 | 5× dearer | 128K |
Source: OpenAI pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Questions
- What is the best alternative to GPT-5 mini in 2026?
- On blended token price, DeepSeek-V4-Flash is the cheapest comparable option — about 3.9× cheaper than GPT-5 mini. Price is only half the decision: a model that costs 70% less but needs a second attempt on hard prompts is not a saving.
- Which alternative is cheapest for output-heavy work?
- Rank on the output column rather than the blended figure. Reasoning and agentic loops bill their thinking as output, so a model with cheap input and expensive output can end up the most costly option on the page despite looking competitive here.
- Do these alternatives have the same context window?
- No — the context column varies by more than 8× across this table. If you are feeding whole documents or codebases, filter on window size first and only then compare price, because a cheaper model that cannot hold your input is not an alternative at all.