ModelRefs / Phi-4 vs o3 — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison
Phi-4 vs o3 — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison
Phi-4 vs o3: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
o3: o3 is OpenAI's extended-thinking reasoning model, applying deliberate chain-of-thought computation to excel on mathematics, science, and competitive programming tasks. Released in April 2025, it introduced OpenAI's scalable test-time compute approach at production scale.
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: o3 accepts up to 200,000 tokens, Phi-4 up to 16,384. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
o3 vs Phi-4 at a glance
| Attribute | o3 | Phi-4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Microsoft |
| Released | 2025-04-01 | 2024-12-12 |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens | 16,384 tokens |
| Input price | $10/M tokens | Free / self-hosted |
| Output price | $40/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 | o3 | Phi-4 | Reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| gpqa | 82.8 | 56.1 | 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
- Cost Efficiency: o3 13%, Phi-4 100%. Phi-4 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: o3 83%, Phi-4 65%. o3 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 Phi-4 vs o3 — Benchmarks, Pricing & Coding Comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Phi-4 or o3?
Phi-4 and o3 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Phi-4 cheaper than o3?
Compare $0.00000 vs $0.0100 on this page.