GPT-4o mini vs GPT-5.2

GPT-4o mini, launched by OpenAI in July 2024, is a lightweight, cost-efficient variant of GPT-4o designed for developers who need strong multimodal reasoning at scale. It supports text and vision inputs (with audio/video support planned) and offers a 128,000-token input context window with outputs up to ~16,000 tokens. Like GPT-4o, it has a knowledge cutoff of October 2023 and integrates the same safety mitigations against misuse and prompt attacks.

GPT-4o mini is significantly cheaper than full GPT-4o while outperforming older models such as GPT-3.5 Turbo. It achieves around 82% on MMLU, reflecting solid reasoning, math, and coding capabilities despite its efficiency focus. The model replaced GPT-3.5 Turbo as the default in ChatGPT for many users, making it widely accessible for everyday conversational AI, educational tools, content generation, and scalable multimodal applications where affordability and speed are priorities.

GPT-5.2 is OpenAI’s latest flagship large language model, released in December 2025. It is a proprietary, multimodal system supporting text and vision inputs, along with tool use, and features a 400,000-token context window designed for working with long documents, extended conversations, and complex workflows.

Relative to GPT-5.1, GPT-5.2 is positioned by OpenAI as offering improved long-context reasoning, more capable tool use, and stronger performance on professional tasks such as writing, coding, spreadsheet work, and image interpretation. The model is available in multiple variants (including Instant, Thinking, and Pro) that balance speed, cost, and depth of reasoning, making GPT-5.2 a general-purpose model aimed at reliability and workflow robustness rather than minimal latency or lowest cost.