Hong Life CalculatorsHow it works
Cost per request = (uncached input tokens × input price + cached input tokens × cached-input price + output tokens × output price) ÷ 1,000,000, with prices in US$ per 1 million tokens. The cost of requests using Batch API is multiplied by the provider’s discount factor (0.5). Day = request cost × requests per day; month = day × days per month; year = month × 12. “Saved” compares with the same traffic at the plain input and output price. Standard tier, short context (up to 272K input tokens). Longer prompts are billed at higher long-context rates. Regional data-residency endpoints add 10%. Taxes, tools (web search, code execution), image or audio tokens, long-context surcharges and cache-write fees are not included.
OpenAI API prices (US$ per 1M tokens, checked 10 Nov 2026)
| AI model | Input price | Cached-input price | Output price | Batch API input / output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gpt-6-astra | 10 | 1 | 50 | 5 / 25 |
| gpt-6.1-sol | 2 | 0.1 | 10 | 1 / 5 |
| gpt-6.1-terra | 1 | 0.05 | 5 | 0.5 / 2.5 |
| gpt-6-sol | 2 | 0.2 | 10 | 1 / 5 |
| gpt-6-luna | 0.1 | 0.01 | 0.5 | 0.05 / 0.25 |
| gpt-5.6-sol | 4 | 0.4 | 20 | 2 / 10 |
| gpt-5.6-terra | 2 | 0.2 | 12 | 1 / 6 |
| gpt-5.6-luna | 0.2 | 0.02 | 1.2 | 0.1 / 0.6 |
| gpt-5.5 | 5 | 0.5 | 30 | 2.5 / 15 |
| gpt-5.4 | 2.5 | 0.25 | 15 | 1.25 / 7.5 |
| gpt-5.4-mini | 0.75 | 0.075 | 4.5 | 0.375 / 2.25 |
| gpt-5.4-nano | 0.2 | 0.02 | 1.25 | 0.1 / 0.625 |
| gpt-5-mini | 0.25 | 0.025 | 2 | 0.125 / 1 |
| gpt-5-nano | 0.05 | 0.005 | 0.4 | 0.025 / 0.2 |
| gpt-4.1 | 2 | 0.5 | 8 | 1 / 4 |
| gpt-4.1-mini | 0.4 | 0.1 | 1.6 | 0.2 / 0.8 |
| gpt-4o-mini | 0.15 | 0.075 | 0.6 | 0.075 / 0.3 |
⚠ Estimates for information only — not financial advice.
FAQ
Why is output so much more expensive than input?
Generating each output token takes a full pass through the model, while input tokens are processed in parallel. OpenAI’s list prices for output are 4 to 8 times the input price, so long answers or reasoning-heavy models drive most of the bill.
When does the Batch API make sense?
For work that can wait up to a day — classifying tickets, summarising archives, generating product descriptions. OpenAI charges half price for batch requests, so moving 100% of such traffic to batch halves its cost.
Checked 10 Nov 2026. OpenAI official API pricing page (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing), read on 10 Nov 2026. Batch API: 50% off input, cached input and output (asynchronous, results within 24 h).