Tier: frontier
Context: 128K
Cheapest Host: OpenAI Direct
GPT-4o API Pricing Calculator & Cheapest Provider
Live unit economics and multi-provider host arbitrage for GPT-4o (openai/gpt-4o).
Input tokens cost $2.50/1M, output tokens cost
$10.00/1M, and prompt cache reads drop to
$1.25/1M.
Input / Output / Cache Read
$2.50 / $10.00
Per 1M tokens · Cache Read: $1.25/1M
10,000 DAU Monthly Bill
$60,300/mo
Drops to $48,488/mo at 75% prompt cache hit rate
Speed & Context Spec
98 tok/s
Context: 128,000 · Max Out: 16,384
1. Multi-Provider Host Arbitrage Table for GPT-4o
Compare every verified inference provider hosting GPT-4o by input price, output price, cache read discount, and throughput speed:
| Provider / Endpoint | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Cache Read / 1M | Throughput | 10K DAU Monthly Bill | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Direct Lowest Price | $2.50 | $10.00 | $1.25 | 98 tok/s | $60,300/mo | Deploy (Route with 0% Markup Fallback) → |
| OpenRouter | $2.50 | $10.00 | $1.25 | 95 tok/s | $60,300/mo | Deploy (Unified API for 470+ Models) → |
2. Monthly SaaS Spend by DAU Scale & Prompt Cache Hit Rate
Exact monthly spend projections across 1,000 DAU, 10,000 DAU, and 50,000 DAU with 0%, 50%, 75%, and 90% prompt caching:
| Active Users (DAU) | Uncached (0% Hit) | 50% Cache Hit | 75% Cache Hit (RAG) | 90% Cache Hit (Agents) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 DAU (1.55B tok/mo) | $6,030/mo | $5,243/mo | $4,849/mo | $4,613/mo |
| 10,000 DAU (15.5B tok/mo) | $60,300/mo | $52,425/mo | $48,488/mo | $46,125/mo |
| 50,000 DAU (77.4B tok/mo) | $301,500/mo | $262,125/mo | $242,438/mo | $230,625/mo |
3. Frequently Asked Questions (GPT-4o)
How much does the GPT-4o API cost per 1M tokens?
GPT-4o (OpenAI) costs $2.50 per 1M input tokens, $10.00 per 1M output tokens, and $1.25 per 1M cached input tokens. Its context window is 128K (128,000 tokens) with 16,384 max output tokens.
What is the cheapest inference provider for GPT-4o?
Among 2 verified endpoints, OpenAI Direct offers the lowest blended pricing at $2.50/1M input and $10.00/1M output (98 tok/s). For maximum throughput, OpenAI Direct delivers 98 tokens/sec.
How much does GPT-4o cost per month at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 DAU?
On a standard SaaS production workload (12 requests/user/day, 3,500 input + 800 output tokens), GPT-4o costs $6,030/month at 1,000 DAU, $60,300/month at 10,000 DAU, and $301,500/month at 50,000 DAU. Enabling 75% prompt caching reduces the 10,000 DAU bill to $48,488/month.
4. Compare GPT-4o Against Alternative Models
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DeepSeek V3 (0324) Pricing Calculator
$0.24/1M in · $0.79/1M out →
Claude 3.7 Sonnet Pricing Calculator
$3.00/1M in · $15.00/1M out →
Gemini 2.5 Pro Pricing Calculator
$1.25/1M in · $10.00/1M out →
DeepSeek R1 (671B Reasoning) Pricing Calculator
$0.50/1M in · $2.15/1M out →
OpenAI o3-mini Pricing Calculator
$1.10/1M in · $4.40/1M out →
GPT-4.1 (1M Context Frontier) Pricing Calculator
$2.00/1M in · $8.00/1M out →