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OpenAI Pricing for API in 2025: Models, Add-Ons, and Comparison for Australian Businesses

Sanjeed V K
Sanjeed V K
25.10.25
Read time 7 minutes

If your team ships features on top of OpenAI — agents, search, analytics, or bulk content — you pay by API usage, not per-user seats. This guide is written for Australian businesses. It explains how OpenAI pricing works for the API, covers GPT-5 and fine-tuning GPT-4 and shows where costs come from. You’ll also get quick ways to cut next month’s bill and a short API-only price benchmark with Anthropic.

Pricing is only half the story; how you pay matters too. When OpenAI invoices in USD, pay with Wise Business to keep spending predictable — you’ll get no foreign transaction fees on the card and always enjoy conversions at the mid-market rate.

Table of contents

OpenAI pricing overview for Australia

OpenAI API pricing is simple: pay-as-you-go¹. OpenAI charges for input tokens, cached input tokens — when used — and output tokens. There’s no monthly subscription for the API — unlike ChatGPT. Some tools, like web search, are priced per call; AgentKit storage has separate rates. OpenAI bills API credits in USD.

Current OpenAI pricing (API)

All pricing for OpenAI API below is in USD per 1m tokens unless noted².

ModelInput (USD per 1m tokens)Cached input (USD per 1m tokens)Output (USD per 1m tokens)Training
GPT-51.25 USD0.125 USD10.000 USD—
GPT-5 mini0.25 USD0.025 USD2.000 USD—
GPT-5 nano0.050 USD0.005 USD0.400 USD—
GPT-5 pro15.00 USDN/A120.00 USD—
GPT-4.1 (fine-tuning example)3.00 USD0.75 USD12.00 USD25.00 USD per 1m tokens
GPT-4.1 mini (fine-tuning example)0.80 USD0.20 USD3.20 USD5.00 USD per 1m tokens
GPT-4.1 nano0.20 USD0.05 USD0.80 USD1.50 USD
o4-mini (reinforcement fine-tuning)4.00 USD1.00 USD16.00 USD100 USD per hour

Details are accurate as of 12 October 2025

The OpenAI API has no monthly or annual plan — you only pay for usage. If you need predictable spend, use budgets and alerts in the OpenAI dashboard and purchase API credits as needed.

GPT-5 pricing

GPT-5 is the general model for high-accuracy reasoning, coding, and agentic workflows. You pay 1.25 USD per 1m input tokens and 10.00 USD per 1m output tokens³.

GPT-5 features

It handles long context, multi-step reasoning, and tool use reliably. It’s strong at code generation, structured extraction, multilingual tasks, and agent workflows. You get high quality on tricky prompts and fewer rewrites for customer-facing features.

Is GPT-5 right for my business?

Pick GPT-5 when higher quality improves a key metric — complex extraction, agentic search, or coding copilots. Use cached input for static system prompts to curb cost; keep output caps tight.

GPT-5 mini pricing

You pay 0.25 USD per 1m input tokens and 2.00 USD per 1m output tokens. Many Australian teams make mini the default to cut costs without a big hit to quality⁴.

GPT-5 mini features

Mini keeps much of GPT-5’s capability with faster latency and lower unit cost. It’s ideal for summaries, templated drafting, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) answers where your retrieval carries the load, lightweight agents, enrichment, and tagging. It supports long enough context for everyday product work.

Is GPT-5 mini right for my business?

Yes — start here for most production endpoints. Use it for email replies, CRM notes, ticket triage, content clean-ups, and internal search. If a use case underperforms in evals, step up to GPT-5 only where it pays back. For very high volume, consider nano.

GPT-5 nano pricing

You pay 0.05 USD per 1m input tokens and 0.40 USD per 1m output tokens⁵. It’s built for scale, not polish — use it when throughput matters most.

GPT-5 nano features

Nano is the speed-and-throughput option. It excels at short tasks: classification, routing, language detection, field extraction, micro-summaries, and metadata generation. Latency is low, and costs stay predictable for pipelines that process millions of small items.

Is GPT-5 nano right for my business?

Use nano for high-volume back-office flows and near-real-time pipelines. It’s perfect for tagging product catalogs, moderating queues, or enriching logs. For nuanced copy, complex reasoning, or code, step up to mini — or GPT-5 for premium quality.

GPT-5 pro pricing

You pay 15.00 USD per 1m input tokens and 120.00 USD per 1m output tokens⁶. There’s no monthly plan. Monitor usage and set strict output caps.

GPT-5 pro features

Pro targets the hardest prompts. It improves accuracy on complex reasoning, long chains, and code refactors. It’s also better at handling ambiguous instructions and edge cases. Expect higher compute and cost, with stronger output quality.

Is GPT-5 pro right for my business?

Use Pro only when marginal quality matters — regulated content with human review, mission-critical coding agents, or financial analysis where a small lift pays back. Run head-to-head evals against GPT-5 before rolling out. Blend models so only the toughest traffic hits Pro.

GPT-4 family

GPT-4.1, 4.1 mini, and 4.1 nano are the prior-generation models that many teams still run in production. They are well-documented models that power many stable workloads. These models suit teams with established prompts, existing fine-tunes, or strict compatibility needs.

GPT-4.1 balances quality with predictable behavior; 4.1 mini and 4.1 nano reduce costs for summaries, tagging, and RAG, where your data does the heavy lifting.

For the GPT-4 family, OpenAI pricing is again metered by tokens, with input and output charged separately and fine-tuning priced per training tokens.

Use the 4.1 family for legacy flows or cost-sensitive work. Reserve GPT-5 for new features or where quality lifts conversion, retention, or resolution.

What is the pricing currency for OpenAI in Australia?

OpenAI pricing is usage-based and quoted in USD for all regions, including Australia. Your actual cost in AUD will shift with the exchange rate at the time of billing. Paying with a Wise Business multi-currency card lets you convert at the mid-market rate with a small, transparent conversion fee.

How much do OpenAI API add-ons cost?

OpenAI offers a few add-ons on top of core model usage; OpenAI pricing for these is separate from token spend.

Web search lets models fetch fresh information during a prompt. Pricing is 25 USD per 1k calls for GPT-4.1/4o/mini, 10 USD per 1k calls for GPT-5 and o-series, and 10 USD per 1k calls for general web search across models.

File search enables the retrieval of your own documents. Storage is metered at 0.10 USD per GB-day, with the first 1 GB free each month.

AgentKit (Agent Builder, ChatKit, Evals) supports production-grade agents. OpenAI starts billing on 1 November 2025: 1 GB free, then 0.10 USD per GB-day. All charges are USD and sit on top of token usage.

How to save on your OpenAI API bill next month

To lower your OpenAI pricing next month, match each job to the right model first, then keep a close eye on how tokens are spent.

For Australian teams, start by mapping use cases to tiers: GPT-5 mini usually covers everyday product work, GPT-5 pays off only where higher accuracy moves a KPI, and GPT-5 nano is ideal for high-volume classification, routing, and micro-summaries. If you’re on legacy 4.1 flows, keep them for cost-sensitive backfills or where your evals already look good.

Review your usage monthly.

Pull your API stats by endpoint and check whether advanced features actually earn their keep. Common culprits are web search calls on static prompts, oversized context windows, image inputs when text would do, long unconstrained outputs, file search storage you no longer need, and agent tool chains that fire more than necessary. Split static context from user input to use cheaper cached tokens and cap max output tokens to prevent runaway responses.

Batch where you can and push low-risk paths to smaller models.

Add budgets and alerts in the OpenAI dashboard so you’re warned before spend spikes. Small guardrails — rate limits, max tokens, and model routing — often deliver the biggest savings.

Because OpenAI pricing (API) charges are in USD, conversion can nudge costs up. Australian teams can keep these costs predictable with a Wise Business multi-currency card account, as you’ll always get the mid-market rate with low, transparent fees. Even better, you can hold, send, receive, and exchange 40+ currencies all in one place.

You can also connect Wise Business cards to your account to control team spending in real time and reduce admin.

➡️Get Wise Business for Smart Savings.

OpenAI pricing vs Anthropic pricing

Anthropic is the maker of the Claude family (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku), a direct alternative to OpenAI’s GPT-5 lineup. Both providers bill by usage (tokens in/out), so you can scale costs to the task and model tier.

At the top end, GPT-5 pro lines up against Claude Opus 4.1. Their input prices match at 15 USD per 1m tokens, but output is higher at 120 USD per 1m for GPT-5 pro than 75 USD per 1m for Opus. If you generate long answers, Opus can be cheaper; if you run many tool calls or agentic steps, you’ll want to test both.

For general work, GPT-5 competes with Claude Sonnet 4.5. GPT-5 is priced at 1.25 USD input/10 USD output per 1m tokens, while Sonnet 4.5 is 3 USD input/15 USD output — OpenAI is the lower-cost option in this tier.

For high-throughput tasks, GPT-5 mini versus Claude Haiku 3.5 is the natural comparison: 0.25 USD/2.00 USD (OpenAI) vs 0.80 USD/4.00 USD (Anthropic) per 1m tokens. GPT-5 nano sits below Anthropic’s current floor at 0.05 USD/0.40 USD, so there’s no true Claude equivalent at that price today⁷.

Hold and pay in USD to save on conversion fees with Wise Business

For Australian teams, cost control comes down to one choice and three habits. Choose the right model for each job, then design prompts to use cached input, limit tool calls like web search and file search, and cap output tokens.

As OpenAI charges in USD, you can save on conversion fees by paying the bill directly in USD with a Wise Business Card. Alternatively, if you don’t have sufficient USD in your account, Wise will convert another currency you have available (at the mid-market rate) for a small conversion fee of 0.63%.

➡️ Learn more about Wise Business today

Open AI pricing FAQs

Does OpenAI offer a free API plan or trial credits?

OpenAI pricing does not include a standing free API plan — you buy API credits in USD and pay per usage. Promotional credits may appear from time to time, but they aren’t guaranteed.

Does OpenAI have a mobile app for the API?

No. The API is for server-side and programmatic use. ChatGPT mobile apps exist, but they’re separate from API access and billing.

Does OpenAI have implementation or onboarding fees for API?

No, not by default. OpenAI pricing is self-serve with pay-as-you-go. If you need enterprise terms or very high usage, contact sales — commercial discussions may cover SLAs or bespoke support, which sit outside metered token pricing.

Which currency will I be billed in for the API?

USD only for credits and charges, regardless of your country.

How should Australian businesses budget for USD fluctuations?

Forecast usage in USD first, then add a small contingency for exchange-rate movement when mapping to AUD. Reconcile monthly against invoices and usage dashboards so your buffer reflects real volatility.

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Sources

  1. OpenAI - Pricing
  2. OpenAI - Token Pricing
  3. OpenAI - GPT-5
  4. OpenAI - GPT-5 mini
  5. OpenAI - GPT-5 nano
  6. OpenAI - GPT-5 pro
  7. Claude - Models and Pricing

Sources checked on 12th October 2025

*Please see terms of use and product availability for your region or visit Wise fees and pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.

This publication is provided for general information purposes and does not constitute legal, tax or other professional advice from Wise Payments Limited or its subsidiaries and its affiliates, and it is not intended as a substitute for obtaining advice from a financial advisor or any other professional.

We make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether expressed or implied, that the content in the publication is accurate, complete or up to date.

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