OpenAI · released 2026-01-15 · text model
GPT-5 mini
AA INDEX84editorial 2026-05editorial estimate
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Input price$0.25/1M tokens
Output price$2.00/1M tokens
Context400Ktokens
P50 latency0.3sfirst tokvendor-reported
Throughput280tok/svendor-reported
GPT-5 family inheritance at a fraction of the cost. Behaves like a fast, polite, well-instructed GPT-5 for everyday calls, but visibly weaker on deep reasoning chains and edge-case hallucinations. Default OpenAI choice when GPT-5 would be overkill — RAG over your docs, lightweight chatbots, classification at scale, drafting before a human edit pass.
Featured in:The Cheapest LLM API for Production in 2026
Full pricing details
all prices in USD per 1M tokens · All hidden costs surfaced| Pricing tier | Input | Output | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Standard Pay-as-you-go API rate card | $0.25 | $2.00 | Default if no headers set |
With prompt caching Cached read · cache write | $0.03−90% | $2.00 | Cache writes priced at standard input ($0.25); cached reads 90% off. Requires cache_control header. |
Batch API (50% off) 24h SLA, async | $0.13−50% | $1.00−50% | Send up to 50K requests in one batch; results within 24h |
Image input (vision) Per image, low/high detail differ | $0.25 + image fee | $2.00 | $0.50 per 1024×1024 image at high detail; low detail ~$0.10 |
Reasoning tokens Hidden chain-of-thought tokens | $0.25 | $2.00 × ~3-8 | When using reasoning.effort: high, output tokens include hidden reasoning. Real cost can be 3-8× headline output. |
Structured output JSON mode + schema | $0.25 | $2.00 | No extra cost; first call may be slower (~2x latency) due to schema compilation |
Capabilities
Vision (image understanding)Function callingStructured output (JSON schema)Reasoning modeMultilingual (32+ langs)Batch APIAudio I/OFine-tuning