News - Jul 3, 2026
GPT-5 Is Here: What It Costs and Who It's For
OpenAI has launched GPT-5, its latest flagship model, with pricing set at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens via API — positioning it above GPT-4o's current rates. The model is available to ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers immediately, with API access open to developers now. OpenAI claims GPT-5 delivers meaningful improvements in reasoning, instruction-following, and multi-step task completion compared to GPT-4o, with particular gains on coding and math benchmarks. Free-tier ChatGPT users will get limited access, though OpenAI has not specified a firm rollout timeline or usage caps for that tier. The model also reportedly unifies the previously separate 'o-series' reasoning approach into the base model, meaning users no longer need to manually select between a reasoning and a standard model.
What changed
New flagship model launched. API pricing: $3 per million input tokens, $15 per million output tokens. Reasoning capabilities folded into base model. Available now for Plus and Pro ChatGPT subscribers. Free tier access unconfirmed on timeline.
Who this affects
Power users on Plus and Pro plans get the upgrade immediately. Developers building reasoning-heavy applications gain a single consolidated model. Free users are once again treated as an afterthought with vague access promises.
Our take
Folding reasoning into the base model is genuinely useful, but charging more than GPT-4o for API access while keeping free-tier details murky is OpenAI doing what OpenAI does — pricing up, explaining less.
Based on OpenAI's official GPT-5 announcement. Verify current API pricing at platform.openai.com before building.
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