OpenAI announced an 80% price cut for its flagship reasoning model o3 and simultaneously launched the high-performance o3-pro model. This move significantly reduces developers' costs, triggering a new round of competition in the AI market.
Major Price Adjustment for o3
OpenAI has made significant adjustments to the pricing of the o3 model as follows:
Input tokens: The original price was $10 per million tokens, now reduced to $2 per million tokens.
Output tokens: The original price was $40 per million tokens, now reduced to $8 per million tokens.
Cached input tokens: An additional 75% discount is provided, priced at $0.5 per million tokens.
The new pricing makes the cost of o3 comparable to or even lower than GPT-4, significantly enhancing its market appeal.
Pricing and Positioning of o3-pro
OpenAI also launched the o3-pro model, targeting complex tasks with high reliability requirements, with the following pricing:
Input tokens: $20 per million tokens.
Output tokens: $80 per million tokens.
The o3-pro model has been launched in the model selector for ChatGPT Pro and Team users and will gradually be made available to enterprise and educational users.
Market Background and Competitive Landscape
This price reduction is seen as OpenAI's response to competitors like Google Gemini2.5Pro and Anthropic Claude4. Developers on social media have reacted enthusiastically to the new pricing of o3, believing that the reduced costs will drive more innovative applications. Some analysts suggest that OpenAI's strategy may trigger a price war in the industry, forcing other vendors to follow suit.
The o3 model has performed excellently in benchmark tests such as Codeforces, SWE-bench, and MMMU, and is expected to gain broader application in programming and scientific computing after the price reduction. The o3-pro model has surpassed competitors in the AIME2024 math test, but its higher cost and slightly slower response time may affect some user choices.
Industry Impact and Outlook
OpenAI's price cuts reflect the results of economies of scale and technological optimization in the AI industry. Social media discussions consider this move not only a reflection of technical progress but also possibly a public relations strategy following recent service disruptions. The low cost of o3 will lower the threshold for developers, promoting the implementation of AI technology in more scenarios, while the o3-pro model provides high-performance options for enterprise users.
https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/o3
