ModelRefs / GPT-5 vs Phi-4 — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison
GPT-5 vs Phi-4 — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison
GPT-5 vs Phi-4: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
GPT-5: GPT-5 is OpenAI's August 2025 reasoning model for coding, reasoning, and agentic tasks. The API model supports text input and output, image input, configurable reasoning effort, and an immutable gpt-5-2025-08-07 snapshot; OpenAI now classifies it as a previous-generation model.
Phi-4: Microsoft's 14B dense decoder-only open-weight text model, trained on 9.8T tokens with a synthetic-data-centered curriculum and available through the microsoft/phi-4 artifact and Microsoft Foundry.
Context window: GPT-5 accepts up to 400,000 tokens, Phi-4 up to 16,384. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
GPT-5 vs Phi-4 at a glance
| Attribute | GPT-5 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Released | 2025-08-07 | 2024-12-12 |
| Context window | 400,000 tokens | 16,384 tokens |
| Input price | $1.25/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Output price | $10/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Licence | Proprietary | MIT |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text, vision | text |
Benchmarks reported for both
| Benchmark | GPT-5 | Phi-4 | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpqa | 85.7 | 56.1 | 2025-08-07 / 2024-12-12 |
Scores are as published by their cited sources on the dates shown. Different runs use different harnesses, prompts, and dates, so treat these as directional evidence rather than a head-to-head result.
Where they differ most
- Hallucination Resistance: GPT-5 99%, Phi-4 3%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
- Cost Efficiency: GPT-5 47%, Phi-4 100%. Phi-4 leads on this dimension.
- Instruction Following: GPT-5 88%, Phi-4 58%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: GPT-5 90%, Phi-4 65%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
- Coding: GPT-5 81%, Phi-4 67%. GPT-5 leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to GPT-5 vs Phi-4 — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, GPT-5 or Phi-4?
GPT-5 and Phi-4 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is GPT-5 cheaper than Phi-4?
Compare $0.00125 vs $0.00000 on this page.