In a bid to extra aggressively compete with rival AI corporations like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API choice that gives decrease AI mannequin utilization costs in alternate for slower response occasions and “occasional useful resource unavailability.”
Flex processing, which is obtainable in beta for OpenAI’s not too long ago launched o3 and o4-mini reasoning fashions, is aimed toward lower-priority and “non-production” duties akin to mannequin evaluations, knowledge enrichment, and asynchronous workloads, OpenAI says.
It reduces API prices by precisely half. For o3, Flex processing is $5/M enter tokens (~750,000 phrases) and $20/M output tokens versus the usual $10/M enter tokens and $40/M output tokens. For o4-mini, Flex brings the worth all the way down to $0.55/M enter tokens and $2.20/M output tokens from $1.10/M enter tokens and $4.40/M output tokens.
The launch of Flex processing comes as the worth of frontier AI continues to climb, and as rivals launch cheaper, extra environment friendly budget-oriented fashions. On Thursday, Google rolled out Gemini 2.5 Flash, a reasoning mannequin that matches or bests DeepSeek’s R1 by way of efficiency at a decrease enter token price.
In an electronic mail to prospects asserting the launch of Flex pricing, OpenAI additionally indicated that builders in tiers 1-3 of its utilization tiers hierarchy must full the newly launched ID verification course of to entry o3. (Tiers are decided by the amount of cash spent on OpenAI companies.) O3’s reasoning summaries and streaming API help are additionally gated behind verification.
OpenAI beforehand mentioned ID verification is meant to cease dangerous actors from violating its utilization insurance policies.
