GPT-4 Paid vs GPT-3.5 Turbo Paid
GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
GPT-4 — full profile › · GPT-3.5 Turbo — full profile ›
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
$60 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
$1.5 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo specs
| Spec | GPT-4 | GPT-3.5 Turbo | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | OpenAI | – |
| Type | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
| Context window | 8K tokens | 16K tokens | |
| Input price | $30/M | $0.5/M | |
| Output price | $60/M | $1.5/M | |
| Vision / multimodal | No | No | – |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Self-hostable | No (API only) | No (API only) | – |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | – |
Price gap & when to choose each
GPT-3.5 Turbo is ~40× cheaper than GPT-4 on output tokens ($1.5 vs $60 per M tokens).
- You want frontier performance through a managed API
- You value reliability & ecosystem
- You don't want to manage infrastructure
- You want frontier performance through a managed API
- You need the longer 16K context window
- You want the lower output price
- You value reliability & ecosystem
- You don't want to manage infrastructure
Feature comparison
| Capability | GPT-4 | GPT-3.5 Turbo |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs fully offline | ✗ | ✗ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✗ | ✗ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✗ | ✗ |
Benchmarks: GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
How GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 Turbo score
| Criterion | GPT-4 | GPT-3.5 Turbo |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 2.0 | 4.5 |
| Context window | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| Openness | 1.5 | 1.5 |
| Self-hosting | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Multimodality | 3.5 | 3.5 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
What each model is
GPT-4 Paid
OpenAI's flagship model, GPT-4 is a large-scale multimodal language model capable of solving difficult problems with greater accuracy than previous models due to its broader general knowledge and advanced reasoning...
GPT-3.5 Turbo Paid
GPT-3.5 Turbo is OpenAI's fastest model. It can understand and generate natural language or code, and is optimized for chat and traditional completion tasks. Training data up to Sep 2021.
Frequently asked questions
GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo — which is cheaper?
GPT-3.5 Turbo is cheaper on output ($1.5/M vs $60/M).
Which has the larger context window?
GPT-3.5 Turbo offers the larger context window (16K tokens).
GPT-4 vs GPT-3.5 Turbo — which should I pick in 2026?
Choose GPT-3.5 Turbo for the lower output price ($1.5/M vs $60/M). It also gives you the larger 16K context window.
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