GPT-4o API Pricing
GPT-4o is two generations old and still on OpenAI's price list: $2.50/M input, $1.25/M cached input and $10/M output, an effective $2.16/M on this site's agentic blend. Two things are worth knowing before you treat it as an archive. It is not the model OpenAI is retiring on October 23, 2026 — that is the frozen gpt-4o-2024-05-13 snapshot, which still lists at the launch price of $5/$15 while the plain gpt-4o alias has charged half that since August 2024. And on our blend it undercuts GPT-5.5, the model most migration guides point to, because GPT-5.5 bills output at $30.
Run the numbers.
Rates are the current ones for the gpt-4o alias, not the frozen 2024-05-13 snapshot. Cache misses bill at the full input rate here: OpenAI publishes no cache-write charge for this model, so there is no separate write line to model.
Real-world presets.
Repo-wide bug fix
Reading 100-page contracts
Support agent ticket triage
Research planning turn
Paste text. See tokens. See cost.
This is a chars-per-token approximation, not a real tokenizer. Actual tokens vary by language, code density, and tool-call overhead — counts are typically ±10–20% off for English prose, more for code or non-Latin scripts. For exact billing, use the vendor's official tokenizer.
| Model | Input /M | Output /M | Effective blended | Context | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o Current | $2.50 cache $1.25 | $10.00 | $2.16 current page | 128K | Legacy multimodal apps already wired to it |
| GPT-5.4 mini | $0.75 cache $0.075 | $4.50 | $0.541 cheaper | 400K | The honest replacement - newer and a quarter the blend |
| GPT-5.4 | $2.50 cache $0.25 | $15.00 | $1.80 cheaper | 1.05M | Same input rate, newer model, bigger context |
| GPT-5.5 | $5.00 cache $0.50 | $30.00 | $3.61 pricier on the blend | 1M | Named as the migration target, but costs more here |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3.00 cache $0.30 | $15.00 | $2.05 about level | 1M | Legacy Claude production baselines |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 cache $0.125 | $10.00 | $1.10 cheaper | 2M | Gemini long-context work |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | $1.32 cache $0.044 | $3.96 | $0.569 cheaper | 1M | Low-cost reasoning and coding |
Frequently asked.
What the alias actually costs, why it is not the id being retired, and what to move to if you are moving.
Q · 01 Is GPT-4o still available? +
gpt-4o is on OpenAI's current price table and in its model catalogue, described there as a fast, intelligent, flexible GPT model. It appears on no retirement table. What is being retired on October 23, 2026 is the frozen snapshot gpt-4o-2024-05-13. The distinction is easy to miss and we missed it ourselves until September 6, 2026 — but OpenAI's retirement table is explicit about aliases where they are covered, listing gpt-4-0613 | gpt-4 and gpt-4-turbo | gpt-4-turbo-2024-04-09, and the gpt-4o row names no alias at all.Q · 02 How much does GPT-4o cost? +
Q · 03 Why do I see $5 and $15 quoted elsewhere? +
gpt-4o-2024-08-06 release — its Structured Outputs announcement says developers save 50% on inputs ($2.50/1M input tokens) and 33% on outputs ($10.00/1M output tokens) compared to gpt-4o-2024-05-13. The dated snapshot kept the old rates and still lists at $5/$15 today. Any page quoting $5/$15 for plain gpt-4o is two years out of date; this one was, until September 6, 2026.