GPT-4o
BalancedLast verified: June 2026· OpenAI GPT-4o pricing
Multimodal flagship-class model with a 128K context window. Confirm current pricing with OpenAI.
- Input / 1M
- $2.50
- Output / 1M
- $10.00
- Context
- 128K tokens
- Provider
- OpenAI
Pricing verified June 2026. Prices change frequently. Always confirm against the provider’s official pricing page before relying on these figures for budgeting. Official pricing →
When to choose GPT-4o
The multimodal generalist on the OpenAI stack, wrapped around a 128K context window. Price it as a mid-tier model rather than a cheap one — at $2.50 in and $10 out it is the most expensive OpenAI row in this table — and plan for the window, because 128K means long inputs get retrieved or truncated rather than pasted. It belongs on routes where modality is the actual requirement. Text-only work running at volume belongs a tier down.
GPT-4o sits close enough to GPT-4.1 on price that the two are usually decided together. That comparison is written once, on the models table, rather than argued twice from opposite sides.
What GPT-4o costs in practice
A 50M-input, 10M-output month works out at $225, the most any OpenAI row in this table charges for that traffic; GPT-4.1 does it for $180 and GPT-4o mini for about $14. Filling the 128K window costs roughly 32 cents of input, so context here is cheap — it is simply not large. Output at four times input means the mix matters more than the headline: a route that reads a lot and answers briefly sits comfortably, and one that generates long-form at volume is where the bill shows up.
| Scenario | Input / mo | Output / mo | Est. cost / mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prototype | 2M | 0.5M | $10 |
| Growing product | 50M | 10M | $225 |
| At scale | 500M | 100M | $2,250 |
Plug in your own numbers with the cost calculator.
Where GPT-4o fits in a routing setup
As the most expensive OpenAI row in this table, this is a destination rather than an escalation target. Downward, GPT-4o mini does the reference month for about $14 against $225 and takes anything that does not need the flagship. Upward, the escalation leaves the OpenAI stack entirely; Claude Sonnet 4.6 at $300 for the same volumes is the nearest comparable step. Since the reason to be here is modality, the routing question is usually which requests actually need it at all.
Cheaper alternatives to GPT-4o
The models immediately below GPT-4o on blended cost, nearest first. A swap only pays if quality holds on the routes you move — see the LLM cost optimization playbook for how to prove that before you move them.
Frequently asked questions
How much does GPT-4o cost?
GPT-4o bills $2.50 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens — $4.38 per million blended at a three-to-one input:output split. A workload of 50M input and 10M output tokens per month works out at about $225. Confirm current pricing with the provider.
What is GPT-4o's context window?
GPT-4o has a 128K-token context window. One request that fills the whole window costs about $0.32 at the input rate, before the reply is billed.
Where does GPT-4o sit on price?
At $4.38 per million blended — three input tokens for every output token — GPT-4o is dearer than 13 of the 19 models tracked here and cheaper than 5. Output bills at 4x the input rate, and the nearest cheaper model on this table is Claude Sonnet 5.5 at $4.00 blended.
Related concepts: context window, model routing, prompt caching, evals.