Claude vs GPT Pricing

Complete Anthropic vs OpenAI API cost comparison — per token, per call, per month, with caching (May 2025)

Head-to-Head: Claude vs GPT Per-Token Pricing

Claude Model Input Output Cache Read Context vs GPT Equivalent
Claude Haiku 3.5 $0.80/M $4.00/M $0.08/M 200k GPT-4o-mini ($0.15/M in, $0.60/M out)
Claude Sonnet 3.5 $3.00/M $15.00/M $0.30/M 200k GPT-4o ($5.00/M in, $15.00/M out)
Claude Opus 3.7 $15.00/M $75.00/M $1.50/M 200k GPT-4-turbo ($10.00/M in, $30.00/M out)

Head-to-Head: GPT vs Claude Per-Token Pricing

GPT Model Input Output Cache Read Context vs Claude Equivalent
GPT-4o-mini $0.15/M $0.60/M $0.075/M (auto) 128k Claude Haiku 3.5 ($0.80/M in, $4.00/M out)
GPT-4o $5.00/M $15.00/M $2.50/M (auto) 128k Claude Sonnet 3.5 ($3.00/M in, $15.00/M out)
GPT-4-turbo $10.00/M $30.00/M N/A 128k Claude Opus 3.7 ($15.00/M in, $75.00/M out)

Use-Case Winner Matrix

Use Case Winner Why
High-volume simple tasks (classification, extraction) GPT-4o-mini Cheapest input at $0.15/M; 5× cheaper than Claude Haiku
Input-heavy workloads (RAG, doc analysis) Claude Sonnet $3/M input vs $5/M for GPT-4o — 40% cheaper on input
Multi-turn agents with large system prompts Claude (any) 90% cache read discount vs 50% for OpenAI auto-cache
Long document processing (>128k tokens) Claude Sonnet/Opus 200k context vs GPT-4o's 128k — fits longer docs without chunking
Vision/image understanding Comparable Both GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet handle images well; GPT-4o has more ecosystem integrations
Coding and reasoning tasks Claude Sonnet/Opus Leads most coding benchmarks (SWE-bench, HumanEval) at cheaper price than GPT-4o
Cheapest flagship model Claude Sonnet $3/M input vs $5/M for GPT-4o; equivalent output quality tier

Summary: When to Choose Each

Choose Claude when...

  • Input tokens dominate your cost (Sonnet saves 40%)
  • You have large, repeated system prompts (90% cache discount)
  • You need 200k context for long documents
  • You're doing complex coding or multi-step reasoning
  • You want explicit control over caching behavior

Choose GPT when...

  • Volume is very high and quality requirements are low (GPT-4o-mini)
  • You need deep OpenAI ecosystem integrations (Assistants API, etc.)
  • Your team already has OpenAI credits/contracts
  • You need specific GPT-4o vision capabilities
  • Simplicity matters: OpenAI caching is fully automatic

Calculate Your Actual Cost

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Claude or GPT-4o cheaper for API calls?

Claude Sonnet 3.5 is cheaper on input: $3/M vs $5/M for GPT-4o (40% savings). Output cost is the same at $15/M. For low-complexity tasks, GPT-4o-mini ($0.15/M input) is cheaper than Claude Haiku ($0.80/M) at standard rates, though Claude's prompt caching can close this gap for agent workloads.

Does Claude's prompt caching make it cheaper than GPT?

Yes, for workloads with large, repeated context. Claude's cache reads cost only 0.1× the input rate (90% off) vs OpenAI's automatic 50% discount. For a 10,000-token system prompt reused across 1,000 calls: Claude cache cost = $0.30 vs OpenAI = $25.00 — an 80× difference.

Which has better value: Claude Sonnet or GPT-4o?

Claude Sonnet 3.5 offers better price-quality for most use cases: 40% cheaper input, comparable output quality, 200k context vs 128k, and deeper caching discounts. GPT-4o has advantages in ecosystem integrations, plugin ecosystem, and some vision workloads.

How do I decide between Claude Haiku and GPT-4o-mini?

GPT-4o-mini wins on raw price ($0.15/M input vs $0.80/M for Haiku). Choose Claude Haiku when: (1) you have large repeated system prompts (cache reads at $0.08/M become cheaper), (2) you need the full 200k context, or (3) you prefer explicit caching control for predictable billing.

Also see: GPT-4o vs Claude Side-by-Side · OpenAI API Cost Calculator · Gemini API Pricing · LLM Cost Comparison 2026 · Claude Haiku Pricing