o3: token counter & pricing
OpenAI · exact (uses official tokenizer) · pricing as of 2026-04-27.
- Provider
- OpenAI
- API model ID
o3- Context window
- 200,000 tokens
- Input price
- $2.00 per 1M tokens
- Output price
- $8.00 per 1M tokens
- Tokenizer accuracy
- exact (uses official tokenizer)
- Pricing as of
- 2026-04-27
Open the counter to count tokens for o3 in real time.
What is o3?
o3 is OpenAI's reasoning-tier model — designed to think longer before responding, which produces measurably better answers on hard logic, math, and code problems. Not a chat model in the GPT-5 sense. Use o3 when the answer matters more than the response time.
How tokens are counted here
o3 uses OpenAI's o200k_base tokenizer (same as the GPT-4o and GPT-5 families). Counts in your browser via js-tiktoken. Exact.
But: the o-series produces a lot of "reasoning tokens" — internal chain-of-thought tokens that count toward your output bill but don't appear in the final response. A 200-token reply might consume 1,500-3,000 output tokens of internal reasoning. The calculator above shows the visible output count; actual billed output is typically 5-15× higher.
Pricing notes
$2.00 input / $8.00 output per 1M tokens. Cached input $0.50/M.
If you're estimating total cost on o3, plan for the reasoning-token multiplier. A workload that looks like 1,000 input + 500 visible output tokens might bill closer to 1,000 input + 4,000 output tokens.
When to use o3
- Multi-step math and logic that GPT-5 / Claude Sonnet get wrong.
- Code generation on algorithmic problems.
- Single-shot answers to hard questions where you're willing to wait 10-30 seconds.
- Eval-set work where you're testing the upper bound of model capability.
When not to use it:
- Real-time chat — latency is too high.
- Routine classification or extraction — overkill, and reasoning tokens balloon the bill.
- Workloads where you've already validated GPT-5 or Claude.
Common questions
Should I use o3 or o3-pro?
o3 ($2/$8) covers most reasoning workloads. o3-pro ($20/$80) is positioned for the hardest problems where 10× spend is justified by single-shot accuracy. Don't reach for o3-pro before measuring o3 falling short.
How does o3 compare to o4-mini?
o4-mini ($1.10/$4.40) is roughly half the price of o3 with most of the reasoning capability. Try o4-mini first for cost-sensitive reasoning workloads — it's often the right choice.
Does o3 work with prompt caching?
Yes — cached input is $0.50/M (25% of standard rate). Useful for agent loops with stable system prompts.
Compare o3 to other models
- GPT-5.5 (OpenAI, $5.00/$30.00)
- GPT-5.5 Pro (OpenAI, $30.00/$180.00)
- GPT-5.4 (OpenAI, $2.50/$15.00)
- GPT-5.4 Mini (OpenAI, $0.75/$4.50)
- GPT-5.4 Nano (OpenAI, $0.20/$1.25)
- GPT-5.4 Pro (OpenAI, $30.00/$180.00)
- GPT-5.3 (OpenAI, $1.75/$14.00)
- GPT-5.2 (OpenAI, $1.75/$14.00)
- GPT-5.2 Pro (OpenAI, $21.00/$168.00)
- GPT-5.1 (OpenAI, $1.25/$10.00)
- GPT-5 (OpenAI, $1.25/$10.00)
- GPT-5 Mini (OpenAI, $0.25/$2.00)
- GPT-5 Nano (OpenAI, $0.05/$0.40)
- GPT-5 Pro (OpenAI, $15.00/$120.00)
- GPT-4.1 (OpenAI, $2.00/$8.00)
- GPT-4.1 Mini (OpenAI, $0.40/$1.60)
- GPT-4.1 Nano (OpenAI, $0.10/$0.40)
- o3-mini (OpenAI, $1.10/$4.40)
- o3-pro (OpenAI, $20.00/$80.00)
- o4-mini (OpenAI, $1.10/$4.40)
- GPT-4o (OpenAI, $2.50/$10.00)
- GPT-4o mini (OpenAI, $0.15/$0.60)
- GPT-4 Turbo (OpenAI, $10.00/$30.00)
- Gemini 3.1 Pro (Google, $2.00/$12.00)
- Mistral Large (Mistral, $2.00/$6.00)
- Qwen3 Coder 480B (Alibaba, $2.00/$2.00)