OpenAI has officially launched an API for its latest AI model, o1-Pro, providing developers with more powerful and refined responses than its previous models. However, this enhanced performance comes at a cost—o1-Pro is OpenAI’s most expensive API to date. Despite the high price, ChatGPT Pro users can access o1-Pro through a built-in mode at no additional charge, albeit with rate limits.
o1-Pro API: A Response to Developer Demand
The release was announced through OpenAI Developers’ official account on X (formerly Twitter), following multiple requests from developers to make o1-Pro’s capabilities accessible via an API. Unlike its predecessor, o1-Pro utilizes more computing power to generate more consistent and improved responses.
While o1-Pro was previously available only as a ChatGPT feature, its benchmark scores remain undisclosed. The API, however, comes with support for vision processing, function calling, structured outputs, and Batch APIs. It can handle both text and images as input, though audio input is not supported, and it only generates text-based output.
Pricing and Availability
The o1-Pro API features a 200,000-token context window, an October 2023 knowledge cutoff, and reasoning token support. OpenAI has positioned it as a premium offering, pricing it at $150 per million input tokens and $600 per million output tokens, making it significantly more expensive than other OpenAI models.
For comparison:
- o1-mini and o3-mini APIs cost $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens.
- The o1-Pro API is currently available to select developers on the paid 1-5 tiers.
Developers should also anticipate additional costs, as o1-Pro charges separately for reasoning tokens, which has been a point of concern in the developer community. Many users have voiced frustration over the lack of transparency in the model’s reasoning process, particularly regarding its chain of thought (CoT).
Access Through ChatGPT Pro
For those unwilling to pay the API costs, ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who pay $200 per month, can access o1-Pro through a dedicated mode within the ChatGPT platform. While this access comes with rate limits, it does not require any additional payment.
With this API release, OpenAI is expanding the o1-Pro model’s capabilities beyond ChatGPT, allowing developers to integrate its advanced reasoning and vision processing features into their own applications. However, the high pricing structure may make it a niche option for businesses and developers requiring the most cutting-edge AI capabilities.
