GPT-4.1 mini
Shares rank 56 of 72 language models by recommenders
Fast, low-cost model that people use for voice agents and structured outputs. One critic reported wrong answers, and one user said OpenAI retired it.
Fast, low-cost model that people use for voice agents and structured outputs. One critic reported wrong answers, and one user said OpenAI retired it.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low latency for voice agents
“For voice agents gpt-4.1 and gpt-4.1-mini seem to be the best low latency models when you need to handle bigger data more complex asks.”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “GPT‑5.4 Mini and Nano” “none of the frontier models come close on latency”
Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model” Good quality for a mini model
“Even the mini version works quite well”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 on Hacker News “the best one so far is GPT4.1-Mini”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Indexing a year of video locally on a 2021 MacBook with Gemma4-31B (50GB swap)”
Other language models people recommend
The four most recommended other language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus | 3,331 | 2,746 | 55% | 13 | 4 mo156 owners | — |
| OpenAI GPT | 1,205 | 987 | 55% | 13 | 6 mo47 owners | — |
| Claude Sonnet | 854 | 586 | 59% | 13 | 6 mo46 owners | — |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 828 | 223 | 79% | 8 | 1 mo24 owners | Approved |
| GPT-4.1 miniThis page | 8 | 1 | 89% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Moving from fine tuned gpt-4.1-mini for structured outputs to gpt-5-mini made zero sense”
“Had to move off of OpenAI once 4.1-mini was retired”
“none of the frontier models come close on latency”
“the best one so far is GPT4.1-Mini”
“GPT-4.1-mini is surprisingly cheap for this operation as well”
“For voice agents gpt-4.1 and gpt-4.1-mini seem to be the best low latency models when you need to handle bigger data more complex asks.”
“GPT 4.1 mini answers wrongly.”
“Even the mini version works quite well”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.