Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: Ling 3.1 Flash scored 41.2% and Solar Mini 4 41.2% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
- Solar Mini 4 is 1.2× cheaper per question as billed ($0.00053 vs $0.00061), reasoning tokens included.
- Solar Mini 4 generates text 15× faster: 107 tokens per second against 7.
- Solar Mini 4 starts answering sooner: 0.7 s to the first token, against 1.1 s for Ling 3.1 Flash.
- Solar Mini 4 accepts more context: 524k tokens against 262k.
Which should you choose?
Choose Solar Mini 4 for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.0013 against $0.0015), faster streaming, a quicker first token and a 524k-token context window.
Accuracy gap +0.0 points (z = 0.00). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.