GPT-4o mini
Shares rank 56 of 72 language models by recommenders
Fast, cheap and capable for API work and simple conversation tasks, though critics find its writing generic and its answers sometimes wrong.
Fast, cheap and capable for API work and simple conversation tasks, though critics find its writing generic and its answers sometimes wrong.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not 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.
- 4 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
Cheap and fast for API use
“The 4o-mini is super cheap and useful for a bunch of things I do”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT” “It is a very capable model and very very fast and dirt cheap”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “RAG Is Simpler Than You Think” “it's fast and accurate for API usage”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT” Better at repeated processing tasks
“Give gpt-4o-mini the first pass context file and a section of the subtitles in a loop”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society” “I have things running where 4o-mini does it considerably better repeatably.”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Is This the Dawn of the Tokenpocalypse?” Capable and useful across many tasks
“The 4o-mini is super cheap and useful for a bunch of things I do”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT” “It is a very capable model and very very fast and dirt cheap”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “RAG Is Simpler Than You Think”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Generic writing that misses humour
“still felt rather generic, and certainly failed at twists and humour”
Comment from 29 Jan 2026 in “The Only Moat Left Is Knowing Things” Gives wrong answers sometimes
“ChatGPT 4o-mini, 5 mini and OSS 120B gave me wrong answers.”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “GPT-5.1: A smarter, more conversational ChatGPT” Overly cooperative in hostile settings
“OpenAI's models remained highly cooperative, a trait that proved catastrophic in hostile environments”
Comment from 19 Aug 2026 in “Opus 5.0 drives incoherence into the stratosphere”
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-4o miniThis page | 8 | 2 | 80% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It is a very capable model and very very fast and dirt cheap”
“OpenAI's models remained highly cooperative, a trait that proved catastrophic in hostile environments”
“I have things running where 4o-mini does it considerably better repeatably.”
“Found OpenAI-4o-mini the best conversation model for my case”
“it's fast and accurate for API usage”
“The 4o-mini is super cheap and useful for a bunch of things I do”
“still felt rather generic, and certainly failed at twists and humour”
“I felt AI could help reasonably well with that in a book that is supposed to feel very opinionated.”
“Give gpt-4o-mini the first pass context file and a section of the subtitles in a loop”
“ChatGPT 4o-mini, 5 mini and OSS 120B gave me wrong answers.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.