Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct
Analysis Summary
Phi 4 Mini Instruct is Microsoft's small-footprint model with an intelligence index of 3.0 and a coding index of 3.6, placing it firmly in the lower tier of the benchmarked field. Its agentic index of 8.2 and livecodebench score of 0.126 confirm it is not suited to complex reasoning, coding, or multi-step agentic tasks.
For businesses, this model is best reserved for simple classification, short-form text generation, or edge-deployment scenarios where compute cost and latency are the dominant constraints. Instruction following (ifbench 0.21) and long-context reasoning (lcr 0.14) are weak, so it should not be used for nuanced content or document analysis.
At $0.08 input and $0.35 output with a 131K context window, it is one of the cheaper Microsoft-backed options. Adopt it only where task complexity is low and cost savings justify the capability trade-off.
Assessed June 19, 2026
Editorial notes
Microsoft Phi 4 Mini Instruct is a compact, low-cost model with limited reasoning and coding capability, suited only to lightweight tasks where cost and latency are the primary constraints.
Rankings consider pricing, capabilities, benchmarks, and real-world applicability and are refreshed as new models launch. Feedback?
Performance Profile
How Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct compares
Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct ranks #346 of 380 AI models we track for overall intelligence, #270 of 292 for agentic tasks. Its 131K-token context window is larger than 59% of the models we list. At $0.08 per million input tokens it is cheaper than 69% of comparable models.
About Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct
Phi-4-mini-instruct is a lightweight open model built upon synthetic data and filtered publicly available websites - with a focus on high-quality, reasoning dense data. The model belongs to the Phi-4..
Performance Indices
Source: Artificial Analysis
Benchmark Scores
Intelligence
Technical
Content
Benchmark data from Artificial Analysis and Hugging Face
How does Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct stack up?
Compare side-by-side with other efficient models.
Model Information
| OpenRouter ID |
microsoft/phi-4-mini-instruct
|
| Provider | microsoft |
| Release Date | October 17, 2025 |
| Context Length | 131,072 tokens |
| Max Completion | 128,000 tokens |
| Status | Active |
Pricing
| Token Type | Cost per 1M tokens | Cost per 1K tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.08 | $0.000080 |
| Output | $0.35 | $0.000350 |
Live Performance
Live endpoint metrics, refreshed every 30 minutes.
External Resources
Frequently asked questions about Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct
How much does Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct cost?
Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct costs $0.08 per million input tokens and $0.35 per million output tokens.
What is the context window of Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct?
Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct has a context window of 131,072 tokens (131K).
Who created Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct?
Microsoft: Phi 4 Mini Instruct is developed by Microsoft and was released on October 17, 2025.
