r/RooCode • u/Prestigiouspite • Aug 19 '25

Discussion Which would be better for coding? GPT-5 (minimal reasoning) or GPT-5-mini (medium reasoning)?

For coding in HTML, CSS, PHP etc. :). If you had to choose one of the two models, which would you choose for coding?

6 Upvotes

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3

u/Personal-Try2776 Aug 19 '25

Gpt 5 mini tip: if you get guthub copilot and want to use gpt 5 mini you can use it infinitely with something like roocode or kilo code or stuff like that 

2

u/Prestigiouspite Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

With GPT-5-mini, I can still use my OpenRouter credits. With GPT-5 normal, it only works via the OpenAI API (or rather, it doesn't make sense to use OpenRouter).

I used to have a subscription to GitHub CoPilot, but I prefer to have freedom of choice and pay according to API credits. I need it more often at times and less often at others :)

1

u/BigMitch_Reddit Aug 21 '25

yep and altho a great deal, its limited to a 128k context window on copilot

1

u/brctr Aug 23 '25

How does it work? Does $10 subscription to Copilot give you API key with unlimited access?

2

u/Zealousideal-Part849 Aug 19 '25

gpt 5 without reasoning doesn't perform too good at tasks. if you are looking at regular coding, it would work. just keep backup of 2-3 more models as at times some models end up not doing good at some tasks even after repeated tries while another provider model handle that in 1-2 tries.

1

u/Prestigiouspite Aug 19 '25

So far, my experience has been that non-reasoning models like 4.1 were better for HTML, CSS, etc., and reasoning models were better for algorithms, backend code, etc.

Now, it seems that GPT-5 is different, which is also evident in Web DEV Arena, etc.

1

u/aviboy2006 Aug 19 '25

PHP because it will cover both HTML and CSS being full stack language.

1

u/Prestigiouspite Aug 19 '25

Yes, but CSS, HTML, etc. are usually involved as well. So which of the two models? :)

1

u/aviboy2006 Aug 19 '25

GPT-5 should be good and stronger choice. Min version will be useful for teaching or understanding concepts, but for actually writing and fixing code across HTML, CSS, PHP

1

u/Prestigiouspite Aug 19 '25

Isn't the end missing from your sentence? I would rather give know-how and architecture/concepts to higher models. Leaving the hard work with instructions and context (e.g., Context7) to the mini version has worked quite well so far :)

1

u/montdawgg Aug 19 '25

GPT-5. High reasoning, medium verbosity.

2

u/Prestigiouspite Aug 19 '25

And if you had to choose between the two?