OpenAI drops o1-pro API, but it costs a fortune
OpenAI just rolled out its compute-heavy o1-pro model to the API for select Tier 1–5 developers. It burns more compute to deliver sharper reasoning responses, while adding vision, function calling, and structured outputs. The catch is the eye-watering price: $150 per million input tokens and $600 per million output tokens.
OpenAI just brought its most powerful reasoning beast to the developer platform, but your wallet is definitely going to feel it.
OpenAI Developers announced that o1-pro is now available in the API. The premise is straightforward: it burns significantly more compute during inference than standard o1 to deliver consistently superior answers.
Max compute at a maximum price
For now, the model is rolling out to select developers across Tiers 1 through 5.
On the tooling side, o1-pro comes fully loaded out of the gate. It supports vision capabilities, function calling, Structured Outputs, and is compatible with both the Responses and Batch APIs.
More thinking power comes with a jaw-dropping price tag: $150 per 1M input tokens and $600 per 1M output tokens.
Why it matters
At $600 per million output tokens, nobody is going to use this for general chat bots or quick summaries. Running standard workflows on o1-pro would burn through enterprise budgets in a heartbeat.
We think this release is aimed purely at mission-critical, zero-error use cases. If you are doing advanced scientific synthesis, formal math verification, or high-stakes code architecture where a single bad answer costs millions, the price might actually look reasonable.
It looks like OpenAI is doubling down on extreme tiering: dirt-cheap lightweight models for the everyday grind, and expensive, brute-force reasoning engines for problems where accuracy is the only thing that matters.
Sources (1)
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