GPT-4o API Pricing
OpenAI · context window 128K · prices updated 2026-09-15
Where GPT-4o sits on price
At $10.00 per million output tokens, GPT-4o is a premium tier model — 4.8× the median output price of $2.08, which puts it cheaper than 22% and pricier than 78% of the models we track. It sits 56th cheapest of the 92 OpenAI models we track. Output costs 4.0× input, the usual spread — trim both, starting with the answer length.
Cached input is 50% cheaper. On an input-heavy workload you need roughly a 50% cache-hit rate to take 25% off the input line — reachable for chatbots and agents that resend the same system prompt and history.
What real workloads cost on GPT-4o
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a premium-priced model — a $10.00/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win. | $0.0265 | $398 |
| Coding agent — 300 sessions/day (60K in / 12K out) Multi-step loops re-read the same files; caching matters more than raw price. | $0.27 | $2430 |
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0027 | $82.50 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads GPT-4o with caching and batch options.
GPT-4o price history
GPT-4o's price has not moved since we began tracking it on Aug 2, 2026 — 44 days of stability in a market where 78 of the 334 models we track have repriced over the same period, including 9 of OpenAI's own 92 models.
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
GPT-4o vs Claude Sonnet 5
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is Claude Sonnet 5 (Anthropic) — priced within a rounding error on output, with $0.5 less per million input tokens. When two models land this close on price, the decision is quality on your own workload, not the price sheet: run 50 real requests through both and compare.
See Claude Sonnet 5 pricing →Cheaper alternatives
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Frequently asked questions
› How much does the GPT-4o API cost?
GPT-4o costs $2.50 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens, with cached input at $1.25 per million (50% cheaper). That works out to roughly 100,000 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the support chatbot workload cost on GPT-4o?
Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) costs about $0.0265 per request and $398 per month on GPT-4o. Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win.
› What does it cost to fill GPT-4o's 128K context window?
Sending 128K of input in a single request costs $0.32 at $2.50 per million tokens — before any output. With prompt caching that same fill drops to about $0.16 on repeat requests. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is GPT-4o worth the price?
GPT-4o sits in the middle of the market (56 of 92 by price within OpenAI). The honest test is a routing experiment: send the same 200 real requests to this model and to a tier below, and compare failure rate against the price gap — most teams find a majority of traffic never needed the pricier model.