GPT-4o vs GPT-5
2026 - Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •GPT-4o is 75% cheaper on input tokens - better for high-volume workloads.
- •Both models come from OpenAI. GPT-4o targets higher capability; GPT-5 is the faster, cheaper tier.
Specs comparison
| GPT-4o | GPT-5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | OpenAI |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | 128K | 128K |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓$2.50 | $10.00 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $10.00 | $30.00 |
| Release date | 2024-05 | 2025-06 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | GPT-5 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | 88.7% | - |
| HumanEval | 90.2% | - |
| GPQA | 53.6% | - |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts.
Strengths
GPT-4o
- ✓Native multimodal input (text, image, audio)
- ✓Fast response times at this capability level
- ✓Strong on structured data and JSON output
- ✓Best ecosystem support across SDKs and tools
- ✓Real-time audio capabilities
GPT-5
- ✓Strong general-purpose reasoning
- ✓Excellent multimodal understanding
- ✓Broad domain knowledge
- ✓Consistent instruction following
- ✓Widely supported by third-party tools
Which should you choose?
Choose GPT-4o if you need...
- →Multimodal apps
- →High-volume production use
- →Chatbots and assistants
- →Structured data extraction
Choose GPT-5 if you need...
- →General-purpose API integrations
- →Multimodal applications
- →Complex reasoning tasks
- →Enterprise deployments