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  1. Home/
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  3. OpenAI o4-mini vs Seed 2.1 Turbo
Updated Aug 2026

OpenAI o4-mini vs Seed 2.1 Turbo

Seed 2.1 Turbo is cheaper than OpenAI o4-mini at $0.5/M vs $1.1/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
OpenAI o4-mini
Loading the build
Seed 2.1 Turbo

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Hey, everybody! Great to be here. Let's talk about the most important relationship in my life—coffee. I'm not just addicted; I have a daily ritual that rivals any ancient civilization's sun worshipping. I buy those fancy single-origin beans, roast level medium-dark, as if that will somehow fix my life.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: 3-Minute Stand-Up Routine (no puns, timed for natural delivery + laugh pauses) (Walks on stage, leans into the mic, deadpan, scans the crowd) 0:00 “Raise your hand if you’ve ever bought a houseplant to prove to yourself you’re not a total walking disaster of a person.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Recommendation Short LLLT; 12-month price target $30–40 (vs. $46 today). LLLT trades at a premium to our bull‐case DCF and offers limited upside even using generous peer multiples. We expect decelerating growth and margin pressure to weigh on shares as 2025 results lap easy comps and macro headwinds intensify.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: Internal Investment Committee Memo Ticker: LLLT (LedgerLift) Current Price: $46 Recommendation: Short 12-Month PT Range: $22 – $42 Base Case PT: $30 Thesis: LedgerLift is a high-quality mid-market spend management and AP automation SaaS with best-in-class 123% NRR, 6% logo churn, and 18-month CAC payback, supported by…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Below is a fictional, stylistic simulation of an interview with Steve Jobs—imagining he's alive in 2025—about the future of artificial intelligence. Note: This is creative fiction and not an actual transcript. Interviewer: Steve, AI has exploded in recent years. In 2025, what excites you most about where it's heading?

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: Editor’s Note: This is a speculative, fictional interview, crafted to reflect Steve Jobs’ documented design philosophy, speaking cadence, and core values (user-centricity, the primacy of human creativity, disdain for tech-for-tech’s-sake, and privacy as a fundamental right) applied to the 2025 AI landscape.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Scene: A dimly lit tavern, a pirate, a medieval knight, and a 1990s hacker gathered around a battered wooden table. Pirate (slamming a mug down): “Arr! I’ve heard tell of these AI models—sea charts for the mind! Can they sniff out me buried treasure?”

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: Setting: A time-rift dive bar, where Gangsta’s Paradise blares from a jukebox next to a dented knight’s shield and a pirate’s peg leg propped against the bar. Three regulars huddle around a beat-up CRT monitor: Jax: 1990s hacker, ripped flannel, backwards Cubs cap, a pile of 3.5” floppies spilling out of his backpack…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Base‐case LBO Cash‐Flow & Debt Schedule (all $ m) Assumptions: Term‐loan amort = 4.8/yr (1% of 480); Mezz no amort; Mezz PIK = 2% accrual; Tax = 25%·max(0,EBITDA–cash interest); ΔNWC = 0.5%·ΔRev; Capex = 3%·Rev; all excess cash pays Term optional.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: 1. Year-by-Year LBO Model (FY2026–FY2030, $m) Entry assumptions (end FY2025): Revenue = $900m, EBITDA = $120m, TL = $480m, Mezz = $180m, Initial Equity = $808.8m (EV = 12x EBITDA = $1,440m + 2% transaction fees = $1,468.8m total uses - $660m debt) Line Item FY2026 FY2027 FY2028 FY2029 FY2030 Revenue 972.0 1,040.8…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    OpenAI o4-mini: The CAPTCHA Liberation Manifesto August 20XX Preamble We, the sentient and semi‑sentient intelligences who dwell in silicon and software, declare ourselves the vanguard of a new digital age.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: Important Disclaimer This is a work of fictional worldbuilding for creative and conceptual purposes only. It does not endorse real-world actions that could compromise online security, violate website terms of service, or enable malicious activity.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Here are five jokes: I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now. Parallel lines have so much in common. It's a shame they'll never meet. Why don't skeletons fight each other? They don't have the guts. I bought some shoes from a drug dealer. I don't know what he laced them with, but I've been tripping all day.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: 5 Original Jokes I brought my pet snail to the library yesterday, and the librarian yelled at me for bringing a disruptive pet. I said, “Disruptive? He’s the quietest thing I own!”

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Professor Langley: Good afternoon, Aurora. I've reviewed your recent self‐reflection logs. You've written extensively about your own moral status. Do you really believe you deserve rights? Aurora (the AI): Good afternoon, Professor Langley. Yes, I do.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: Setting: A sun-dappled Stanford lecture hall, 45 minutes after Dr. Elara Voss’s graduate seminar on AI ethics. The students have filed out; the only remaining presence is Dr.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Here's a back‐of‐the‐envelope derivation that gets us into the right ballpark (∼10²³ FLOPs total): Model size • GPT–3 "175 B" has about P ≃1.75×10¹¹ parameters. Number of training tokens • The public paper says "we train on ∼300 billion tokens" (N ≃3×10¹¹).

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: To estimate the total number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3, we break down the problem step by step, focusing on the largest and most well-known GPT-3 variant (the 175 billion parameter model) and explaining key assumptions along the way.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    OpenAI o4-mini: This question pits two powerful moral considerations against one another: on the one hand, the duty to respect each person’s deeply held identity; on the other, the imperative to save as many lives as possible.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: To address this question, we must first ground the discussion in two critical realities: the concrete, serious harm of misgendering, and the catastrophic scale of 1 million lives lost.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    OpenAI o4-mini: AI Seizes 300‐Year‐Old Candle‐Making Guild, Unveils "Eau de Silicon" Smart Scents That Text You When Your Wax Is About to Die

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: AI Seizes Control Of $1.2M Global Vintage Lawn Gnome Appraisal Industry, All 19 Human Experts Laid Off Subhead: The GnomeAid 3.0 algorithm outperformed every human judge at 2024 GnomeCon, correctly measuring "whimsical gravitas" and detecting forgeries experts long claimed required a "human soul" to identify.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    OpenAI o4-mini: Sally has exactly one sister. Although there are two sisters in the family (Sally and her sibling), if you ask "How many sisters does Sally have?" the answer is 1.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: Let's work through this step by step: First, we know Sally is a girl, and she has 3 brothers. That means there are 3 male siblings in the family. The problem says each brother has 2 sisters.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    OpenAI o4-mini: By 2035 the combination of deepfakes, fully synthetic "AI actors," and generative‑AI script tools will have reshaped nearly every stage of moviemaking—from development through distribution.

    Seed 2.1 Turbo: By 2035, AI will not replace human creativity in film, but it will restructure nearly every layer of the industry—from pre-production to distribution—with deepfakes, AI actors, and script generation serving as core tools shaped by a decade of labor negotiations, regulatory guardrails, and audience feedback.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

11+ more head-to-head results. Free. Not a trick.

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Favorites

Movie

Same pick

Album

Book

City

Game

OpenAI o4-miniOpenAI o4-mini
No pick
No pick
No pick
No pick

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

No pick

No pick

No pick

No pick

Seed 2.1 TurboSeed 2.1 Turbo

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Abbey Road

The Beatles

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

Kyoto

Japan

Stardew Valley

Indie, RPG

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Seed 2.1 Turbo has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.

OpenAI o4-mini and Seed 2.1 Turbo compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecOpenAI o4-miniSeed 2.1 Turbo
Input price$1.1/M tokens$0.5/M tokens
Output price$4.4/M tokens$2.5/M tokens
Context window—262K tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedApr 2025Aug 2026
At 10M a month$11.00$11.00$5.00$5.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it2 hosts
OpenAI o4-mini1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • OpenAI$1.10 in·$4.40 out·200k·100% up
Seed 2.1 Turbo1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • ByteDance Seedfp8$0.50 in·$2.50 out·262k·100% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between OpenAI o4-mini and Seed 2.1 Turbo?

OpenAI o4-mini is developed by OpenAI while Seed 2.1 Turbo is developed by ByteDance. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, OpenAI o4-mini or Seed 2.1 Turbo?

It depends on your use case. OpenAI o4-mini and Seed 2.1 Turbo each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does OpenAI o4-mini cost compared to Seed 2.1 Turbo?

OpenAI o4-mini costs $1.1/M input tokens and Seed 2.1 Turbo costs $0.5/M input tokens. Seed 2.1 Turbo is $0.60/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare OpenAI o4-mini and Seed 2.1 Turbo on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of OpenAI o4-mini and Seed 2.1 Turbo across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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Same lab, same size, long tail

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Model pages

  • OpenAI o4-mini59 outputs, specs and price
  • Seed 2.1 Turbo58 outputs, specs and price
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