GPT-4o mini vs Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite

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GPT-4o mini

OpenAI

$0.15 / in · $0.6 / out

per 1M tokens

Context: 128K

Cached input: $0.075/M

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Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite

Google

$0.1 / in · $0.4 / out

per 1M tokens

Context: 1,000K

Cached input: $0.025/M

Price. Flash-Lite $0.10/$0.40. GPT-4o mini $0.15/$0.60. Flash-Lite is ~33% cheaper.

Quality. GPT-4o mini is noticeably better at following complex instructions, structured output, and tool use. Flash-Lite wins on pure throughput, multimodal, and long-context recall.

Context. Flash-Lite 1M vs GPT-4o mini 128K. Flash-Lite wins for long-doc classifiers.

Latency. Both are fast. Flash-Lite is typically a hair quicker; GPT-4o mini has broader region coverage.

Practical verdict:

- RAG answer generator, long-doc classifier, summarizer → Flash-Lite. - JSON-mode structured extraction, tool-using agent → GPT-4o mini. - Multimodal (images/audio) → Flash-Lite. - Already on OpenAI SDK, don't want provider sprawl → GPT-4o mini.

For maximum cost control with one provider, Flash-Lite. For reliability in agentic pipelines, GPT-4o mini is still the budget-tier default.