o3-mini

OpenAI o3-mini is positioned as the cost-efficient entry in OpenAI's reasoning series, succeeding the smaller o1-mini while retaining low latency. According to OpenAI, it delivers particular strength in science, math, and coding, areas where small models have historically lagged behind larger reasoning systems. Its design philosophy centers on making structured, step-by-step reasoning accessible to developers who need quick responses rather than the deeper deliberation associated with full-size reasoning models.

From a developer-experience perspective, o3-mini was the first small reasoning model in the family to ship with production-grade features such as function calling, Structured Outputs, and developer messages, alongside streaming support carried over from o1-mini. OpenAI exposes three selectable reasoning effort levels (low, medium, and high), letting teams tune the trade-off between response speed and analytical depth per workload. Independent academic work on automated program repair has shown o3-mini outperforming comparable small and mid-sized peers on Java compilation repair benchmarks, reinforcing its practical fit for code-related and STEM reasoning tasks in agentic pipelines.

OpenAIo3-minio-minideprecated

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Quick Info

Provider: OpenAI
Model key: o3-mini
Release date: Dec 20, 2024
Last updated: Jan 29, 2025
Knowledge cutoff: 2024-05
Input modalities
Output modalities
Capabilities

Cost

Input token cost: $1.10
Output token cost: $4.40

Limits

Output tokens: 100,000 tokens
Context window: 200,000 tokens

Transparent token rates

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Rates are shown per one million tokens. Combined means one million input plus one million output tokens.

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Latest news about o3-mini

DevPass (LLM Gateway)

Coverage

In a Hacker News thread dated April 16, 2025, a self-identified OpenAI employee (tedsanders) clarified the positioning of o3-mini relative to its successor: in ChatGPT, o4-mini is replacing o3-mini as a straight 1-to-1 upgrade, while the OpenAI API continues to support o3-mini so that developers who built products atop The same comment contextualizes the policy by comparing it to how Apple supports many iPhone models in software updates and developer documentation, and notes OpenAI's earlier unified naming scheme (modality-size-version) before adopting the GPT-N convention. The thread also raised developer questions about deprecation

OpenAI

Official sourceRelease Notes

OpenAI’s Model Release Notes say the full-size o3 reasoning model is scheduled for retirement from ChatGPT on August 26, 2026, after a 90-day sunset period that began May 28. This is useful family-level context because o3-mini belongs to the same o-series, but the supplied excerpt does not state o3-mini’s own API or Ch The same official changelog says GPT-5.6 Sol began rolling out to eligible paid ChatGPT plans on July 9, 2026, with availability varying by plan and workspace settings. It also records a May 28 GPT-5.5 Instant update, but neither item should be interpreted as a confirmed lifecycle change for o3-mini without separate mo

OpenAI

CoverageBenchmark

OpenAI o3-mini is a cost-efficient language model optimized for STEM reasoning tasks, particularly excelling in science, mathematics, and coding. $1.10 per million input tokens, $4.40 per million output tokens. 200,000 token context window, maximum output of 100,000 tokens. Includes independent benchmarks from Artifici