gpt-oss-safeguard-20b API Pricing
OpenAI · context window 131K · prices updated 2026-09-22
Where gpt-oss-safeguard-20b sits on price
At $0.3 per million output tokens, gpt-oss-safeguard-20b is a budget tier model — 6.8× cheaper than the median output price of $2.04, which puts it cheaper than 89% and pricier than 11% of the models we track. It sits 4th cheapest of the 90 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-oss-safeguard-20b
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a budget-priced model — a $0.3/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| High-volume classification — 200K requests/day (400 in / 20 out) Short output, huge volume: the input price dominates the bill. | $0 | $216 |
| Small app — 1K requests/day (500 in / 150 out) The baseline most side projects actually run at. | $0.0001 | $2.48 |
| Document pipeline — 10K docs/day (3K in / 500 out) Batch-friendly: no user waiting, so a ~50% batch discount usually applies. | $0.0004 | $113 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads gpt-oss-safeguard-20b with caching and batch options.
gpt-oss-safeguard-20b price history
gpt-oss-safeguard-20b's price has not moved since we began tracking it on Aug 2, 2026 — 51 days of stability in a market where 79 of the 336 models we track have repriced over the same period, including 9 of OpenAI's own 90 models.
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Aug 2, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
gpt-oss-safeguard-20b vs Gemma 4 26B A4B
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is Gemma 4 26B A4B (Google) — priced within a rounding error on output, with $0.015 more 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 Gemma 4 26B A4B pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More OpenAI models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the gpt-oss-safeguard-20b API cost?
gpt-oss-safeguard-20b costs $0.075 per million input tokens and $0.3 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.0375 per million (50% cheaper). That works out to roughly 3,333,333 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the high-volume classification workload cost on gpt-oss-safeguard-20b?
High-volume classification — 200K requests/day (400 in / 20 out) costs about $0 per request and $216 per month on gpt-oss-safeguard-20b. Short output, huge volume: the input price dominates the bill.
› What does it cost to fill gpt-oss-safeguard-20b's 131K context window?
Sending 131K of input in a single request costs $0.0098 at $0.075 per million tokens — before any output. With prompt caching that same fill drops to about $0.0049 on repeat requests. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is gpt-oss-safeguard-20b worth the price?
gpt-oss-safeguard-20b is in the cheapest end of the market — cheaper than 89% of the models we track. At this price the question is not cost but capability: it is a good fit for classification, extraction, routing and bulk summarisation, and a poor fit for multi-step reasoning where a wrong answer costs more than the tokens saved.