In a bid to extra aggressively compete with rival AI firms like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API choice that gives decrease AI mannequin utilization costs in change for slower response occasions and “occasional useful resource unavailability.”
Flex processing, which is offered in beta for OpenAI’s lately launched o3 and o4-mini reasoning fashions, is aimed toward lower-priority and “non-production” duties corresponding to mannequin evaluations, information 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 value right 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 because the value 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 e mail to prospects asserting the launch of Flex pricing, OpenAI additionally indicated that builders in tiers 1-3 of its utilization tiers hierarchy should full the newly launched ID verification course of to entry o3. (Tiers are decided by the amount of cash spent on OpenAI providers.) O3’s reasoning summaries and streaming API assist are additionally gated behind verification.
OpenAI beforehand stated ID verification is meant to cease dangerous actors from violating its utilization insurance policies.
