Side-by-side API pricing and tokenizer details for GPT-4o (OpenAI) and o4-mini (OpenAI).
Side-by-side pricing
Feature
GPT-4o
o4-mini
Provider
OpenAI
OpenAI
Input (per 1M tokens)
$2.50
$1.10
Output (per 1M tokens)
$10.00
$4.40
Context caching
No
No
Batch API discount
50% off
50% off
Context window
128K tokens
200K tokens
Tokenizer
o200k_base (tiktoken)
o200k_base (tiktoken)
ⓘ GPT-4o: Deprecated by OpenAI. API access shuts down 2026-10-23; calls will error after that date. Prices are no longer listed on OpenAI's pricing page and could not be re-verified from a vendor source.
ⓘ o4-mini: Deprecated by OpenAI. API access shuts down 2026-10-23; calls will error after that date. Prices are no longer listed on OpenAI's pricing page and could not be re-verified from a vendor source.
Real-world cost example
1,000 API requests per month, each with 500 input tokens and 200 output tokens (500K input + 200K output total).
GPT-4o
$3.2500
Input: $1.2500 +Output: $2.0000
o4-mini
$1.4300
Input: $0.5500 +Output: $0.8800
o4-mini is 56% cheaper for this workload — saving $1.8200 per month at this volume.
Frequently asked questions
No, o4-mini is cheaper for the typical workload above. At $1.10/1M input and $4.40/1M output tokens, it costs $1.4300 versus $3.2500 for GPT-4o — a 56% difference.
GPT-4o supports a 128K token context window. o4-mini supports a 200K token context window. A larger context window lets you include more text — documents, conversation history, or code — in a single API call.
GPT-4o does not support context caching. It offers a 50% Batch API discount. o4-mini does not support context caching. It offers a 50% Batch API discount.
Yes, both GPT-4o and o4-mini use the o200k_base (tiktoken). The same text produces identical token counts on both models, so any cost difference is purely due to the rate each provider charges per token.
GPT-4o (OpenAI): $2.5 input / $10 output per 1M tokens. o4-mini (OpenAI): $1.1 input / $4.4 output per 1M tokens. Rates shown before caching or batch discounts.
For an 80% output / 20% input workload — typical for code generation or long-form writing — GPT-4o costs $8.5000 per 1M total tokens and o4-mini costs $3.7400. o4-mini is 56% cheaper for this pattern. For your exact ratio, paste a real prompt into the calculator above.
GPT-4o has a 128K-token context window — approximately 96K words or ~384 pages of standard text. o4-mini has a 200K-token context window — approximately 150K words or ~600 pages. (Estimates assume ~0.75 words per token.)
Calculate costs for your actual prompt
Paste your prompt into the calculator and get exact token counts using each model's real tokenizer — all in your browser.