OpenAI frontier models
GPT-5.1 cost breakdown
At $1.25/$10 per million tokens ($0.125 cached), GPT-5.1 is the sweet spot for frontier reasoning at scale.
Last pricing check: Mar 13, 2026
Why teams choose this model
Scenario planning
Realistic cost examples
Numbers use GPT-5.1 pricing
Shared enterprise chat
Company-wide chatbots combine retrieval + GPT-5.1 to answer policy questions.
Per request
$0.0071
Per month
$320.63
Tokens sent
67,500,000
Compliance reviewer
Risk teams run GPT-5.1 over contracts for flagging clauses and summarizing obligations.
Per request
$0.013
Per month
$91.00
Tokens sent
18,900,000
Data storyteller
Analytics copilots translate dashboards into narratives for exec briefings.
Per request
$0.0108
Per month
$193.50
Tokens sent
41,400,000
Compare with
FAQs
How does GPT-5.1 compare to GPT-5?
OpenAI lists both at the same price. Treat GPT-5.1 as the stable release and GPT-5 as the general/default alias.
Can I rely on cache hits at this tier?
$0.125/M tokens adds up when you reuse instructions across thousands of chats. TokenTally lets you compare cached vs. uncached totals.
What about flex tier discounts?
Flex tier chops prices in half when latency isn’t critical. Until we expose tier toggles, include a manual 50% sensitivity in your notes.
Pricing sources
- https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing
Checked Mar 13, 2026