GPT-5 API Pricing: Complete Cost Breakdown for Developers

khushman — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 04:16:16 +0000

GPT-5 Has Arrived — Here's What It Costs

GPT-5 launched with three pricing tiers that give developers real flexibility:

Model	Input (per 1M tokens)	Output (per 1M tokens)	Context
GPT-5	$1.25	$10.00	128K
GPT-5-Mini	$0.25	$2.00	128K
GPT-5-Nano	$0.10	$0.40	128K

How Does This Compare?

GPT-5 sits between Claude Opus 4.6 ($5/$25) and the previous GPT-4o ($2.50/$10) in pricing. GPT-5-Mini is the sweet spot for most production workloads — comparable quality to GPT-4o at a fraction of the cost.

The Smart Way to Access GPT-5

Instead of managing separate API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, you can route through an LLM gateway like MegaLLM. One API call, automatic failover, and smart routing to the cheapest model that meets your quality bar.

import openai

client = openai.OpenAI(
    api_key="sk-mega-your-key",
    base_url="https://ai.megallm.io/v1"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-5",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain quantum computing"}]
)

Same code works for Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, or any of 50+ models. Switch models by changing one string.

Bottom Line

GPT-5-Mini at $0.25/$2 per million tokens is the new default for most apps. Use full GPT-5 for complex reasoning tasks. Use GPT-5-Nano for high-volume, simple classification.

Published via MegaLLM — one API for 70+ AI models.

DEV Community: khushman

GPT-5 API Pricing: Complete Cost Breakdown for Developers

GPT-5 Has Arrived — Here's What It Costs

How Does This Compare?

The Smart Way to Access GPT-5

Bottom Line