ChatGPT API Pricing 2025: How Much Does It Cost to Build with GPT-4?
Building AI applications with the OpenAI API? Here’s a complete breakdown of GPT-4 API pricing to help you estimate costs.
OpenAI API Pricing (2025)
| Model | Input (per 1M tokens) | Output (per 1M tokens) |
|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | $5.00 | $15.00 |
| GPT-4o mini | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| GPT-4 Turbo | $10.00 | $30.00 |
| GPT-3.5 Turbo | $0.50 | $1.50 |
| o1 (reasoning) | $15.00 | $60.00 |
| o1-mini | $3.00 | $12.00 |
What Is a Token?
1 token ≈ 4 characters or ¾ of a word in English. Common benchmarks:
- 1,000 tokens ≈ 750 words
- A typical ChatGPT conversation: 500-2,000 tokens
- An entire Harry Potter book: ~500,000 tokens
Cost Estimates by Use Case
| Use Case | Model | Cost per 1,000 requests |
|---|---|---|
| Customer service chatbot (short) | GPT-4o mini | $0.03-0.15 |
| Content generation (500 words) | GPT-4o | $0.50-2.00 |
| Code review (1000 lines) | GPT-4o | $2.00-8.00 |
| Document analysis (10 pages) | GPT-4o | $0.50-3.00 |
GPT-4o vs GPT-4o mini: Which Should You Use?
Use GPT-4o when: Quality is critical, complex reasoning needed, customer-facing responses
Use GPT-4o mini when: High volume, cost sensitivity, classification tasks, simple queries
Cost Optimization Tips
- Use GPT-4o mini for filtering: Route simple queries to mini, complex to GPT-4o
- Optimize system prompts: Shorter prompts = lower costs (every word costs money)
- Cache common responses: Don’t pay for the same answer twice
- Implement prompt compression: Summarize long context windows before sending
- Set max_tokens limits: Prevent unexpectedly long (expensive) responses
Claude API vs OpenAI API Pricing
| Model | Input | Output | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4o | $5/M | $15/M | 128K |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet | $3/M | $15/M | 200K |
| Gemini 1.5 Pro | $3.50/M | $10.50/M | 1M |
For many API use cases, Claude 3.5 Sonnet offers better value than GPT-4o — lower input cost, longer context.
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