o3 API Pricing
OpenAI · Mid-tier · Proprietary · released 2025-04. Prices in USD per 1 million tokens. Data snapshot: 2026-09-28.
Deprecated. The vendor has announced retirement of this model's API · shutdown 2026-12-11 · suggested replacement: GPT-5.6 Sol. It still carries a price because resellers still serve it; treat it as a model to migrate off, not one to start on.
o3 has held the same list price since 2026-08-15 and is the 80th cheapest of 108 Mid-tier models. Only one host, OpenAI, sells it, so there is no second price to shop. The vendor has announced its retirement, so it is a model to migrate off rather than start on.
- Input: $2.00 per 1M tokens
- Output: $8.00 per 1M tokens
- Batch API (input/output): $1.00 / $4.00
- Prompt-cache read: $0.50
- Context window: 200K
- Arena ELO: 1432 (as of 2026-09-25)
- Available on: Direct API, Azure AI Foundry, OpenRouter (curated by hand, verify with the provider)
o3 market position
On blended price ($6.20 per 1M tokens at 30% input, 70% output) it is cheaper than 24% of Mid-tier models: 80th cheapest of 108, tied with 2 others. Across every category it is cheaper than 20% of priced text models in the catalogue: 222nd cheapest of 281, tied with 2 others. Its Arena ELO of 1432 ranks 41st of the 68 models that carry one, above 40% of them.
o3 licence, size and capabilities
o3 is recorded here as proprietary: access is through an API, priced by the token. Its parameter count is not published. Listed capabilities: Text, Vision, Reasoning, Code, Agents. Filling its 200K context window once costs $0.40 in input tokens at list price.
Monthly cost at 100K requests, by business use case
From the after-discounts figure (prompt caching on the cached input share, batch API for async workloads, only where the provider publishes those rates), which assumes you implement both, to the list price. One figure means no discount is published.
| Use case | Tokens (in/out) | Monthly (after discounts – list) |
|---|---|---|
| Support Ticket | 1,500 / 500 | $565 – $700 |
| Knowledge Q&A | 2,000 / 800 | $830 – $1.0K |
| Meeting Summary | 10,000 / 1,200 | $1.4K – $3.0K |
| Marketing Content | 2,500 / 1,800 | $1.9K |
| Coding Task | 3,000 / 2,000 | $2.0K – $2.2K |
| Invoice Processing | 1,500 / 600 | $368 – $780 |
| Call Summary | 2,000 / 700 | $470 – $960 |
| Agent Workflow | 6,000 / 3,000 | $3.0K – $3.6K |
o3 pricing by host
A host is a company that runs the model and sells it by the token — the lab that made it, a cloud platform like Amazon Bedrock, Azure or Vertex, or an independent provider. One model, several sellers, and often several prices. This model is sold by 1 host. The price quoted above is the one we publish so that models stay comparable; it is not necessarily the cheapest way to buy this model. List prices as published on 2026-09-28 via OpenRouter — negotiated rates, committed-use discounts and provisioned capacity are not shown.
OpenAI is the only host with a published rate, $2.00 input / $8.00 output per 1M tokens, which is the price shown on this page.
| Host | Input $/1M | Output $/1M |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI (the price shown above) | $2.00 | $8.00 |
o3 price history
o3 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $2.00 input / $8.00 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
Alternatives to o3
- Next cheaper Mid-tier model: Pareto (unbiased) at $6.00 blended, 3% less.
- Next more expensive: Gemini 3.5 Flash (Google) at $6.75 blended, 9% more.
The nearest Mid-tier models on Arena ELO, each with its blended price and score difference against o3.
- GPT-5 (OpenAI) — $1.25 in / $10.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1435: 19% more expensive, 3 ELO points higher
- GPT-5.2 (OpenAI) — $1.75 in / $14.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1436: 67% more expensive, 4 ELO points higher
- Qwen3.8 27B (Alibaba) — $0.42 in / $3.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1438: 64% cheaper, 6 ELO points higher
- GPT-5.1 (OpenAI) — $1.25 in / $10.00 out per 1M, Arena ELO 1438: 19% more expensive, 6 ELO points higher
- Cheapest within 15 Arena points: DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 (DeepSeek), 98% cheaper, 4 ELO points higher, out of 10 models in that band.
- Highest Arena ELO within 20% of this price: Gemini 3.5 Flash (Google), 9% more expensive, 45 ELO points higher, out of 5 models in that price band.
Common questions about o3 pricing
- How much does o3 cost?
- o3 costs $2.00 per million input tokens and $8.00 per million output tokens on the API.
- Does o3 offer batch or cached pricing?
- Yes. Batch API pricing is $1.00/M input and $4.00/M output. Prompt-cache reads cost $0.50/M.
- What would o3 cost per month?
- For a support-ticket workload (1,500 input + 500 output tokens per request) at 100K requests/month, o3 costs about $700 at list prices.
- Has the price of o3 changed?
- o3 has been in our daily price archive since tracking began on 2026-08-15, when it listed at $2.00 input / $8.00 output per 1M tokens. No list price change since tracking began on 2026-08-15. Last checked against the 2026-09-28 snapshot.
These are list prices: real cost also depends on caching, batching, negotiated discounts, marketplace agreements, and existing contracts. Get a FinOps review from OptimNow or compare all models.
Build the business case for o3 in the AI ROI Calculator: add your business value on top of these costs to get ROI, break-even and payback.
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