If you’re using AI models like GPT-5 and GPT-4.1 for your projects, you might want to take a closer look at their pricing structures. A recent comparison highlights some key differences that could impact your budget.
The main takeaway is that GPT-5 is priced lower for input tokens at $1.25/M, compared to $2.00 for GPT-4.1. However, when it comes to output tokens, GPT-5 costs $10/M, while GPT-4.1 costs $8/M.
To illustrate how this pricing difference affects users, a helpful chart shows the cost of a prompt + response as the length of the input prompt changes, with the output response fixed at 1000 tokens. The chart reveals that as the length of your input prompt decreases compared to the response from the model, GPT-5 becomes more expensive.
This could be a problem if you’re outputting long responses like blog posts or instructions. On the other hand, if your input prompts are longer and your responses are shorter, GPT-5 might be the more cost-effective option.
It’s essential to understand these pricing differences to make informed decisions about which AI model to use for your projects. You can check out the official pricing pages for more information.
Source: https://platform.openai.com/docs/pricing