GPT-4o vs GPT-4o mini vs Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct

GPT-4o mini is the better all-round choice, scoring 56/100 against Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct (44) and GPT-4o (43). It leads on price. GPT-4o wins on capability. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

GPT-4o mini is cheaper at $0.15 input / $0.60 output per million tokens (official OpenAI API price). Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct costs $0.72 input / $0.72 output per million tokens (median across 5 API providers); GPT-4o costs $2.50 input / $10.00 output per million tokens (official OpenAI API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.263 per million tokens for GPT-4o mini versus $0.72 for Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct (2.7× as much) and $4.38 for GPT-4o (17× as much).

GPT-4o scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): GPT-4o 129.0 (#129 of 148), GPT-4o mini 126.6 (#135 of 148) and Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct 125.9 (#136 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (124.2–131.5 vs 120.5–128.5), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — GPT-4o 48.9%, Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct 44.2%, GPT-4o mini 37.7%; OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 — GPT-4o mini 6.9%, GPT-4o 6.3%, Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct 3.6%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini and Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, GPT-4o leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini and Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct share the same 128,000-token context window. Maximum output per response: GPT-4o up to 16,384, GPT-4o mini up to 16,384, Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct up to 4,096 tokens.

GPT-4o accepts text, images and PDFs; GPT-4o mini accepts text, images and PDFs; Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct accepts text. GPT-4o handles the widest range of inputs.

Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini is proprietary.

Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct is the newest, released Jul 23, 2024. GPT-4o mini came out Jul 18, 2024; GPT-4o came out May 13, 2024. Knowledge cutoff: GPT-4o Sep 2023, GPT-4o mini Sep 2023, Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct Dec 2023.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Oct 4, 2026.