OpenAI GPT-4o Complete Guide: Features, Pricing & Best Practices
Comprehensive guide to GPT-4o including features, pricing, use cases, and optimization tips. Everything you need to know about OpenAI's flagship model.
OpenAI GPT-4o Complete Guide: Features, Pricing & Best Practices
GPT-4o is OpenAI's flagship multimodal model, offering excellent performance across text, code, and visual tasks. This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know.
GPT-4o Key Features
- 128K token context window for long conversations
- Multimodal capabilities: text, images, and audio
- Superior code generation and debugging
- Strong mathematical and logical reasoning
- Real-time voice conversations
- Integration with DALL-E for image generation
Pricing Breakdown
| Usage Type | Cost | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokens | $2.50 per 1M | Processing prompts and context |
| Output tokens | $10.00 per 1M | Generated responses |
| Cached input | $1.25 per 1M | Repeated context (50% discount) |
| Images | $0.00765 each | Visual analysis and description |
When to Choose GPT-4o
GPT-4o excels in these scenarios:
- Production applications requiring consistent quality
- Code generation, debugging, and technical documentation
- Multimodal applications with text and images
- Business applications and customer support
- Creative writing and content generation
- Mathematical problem solving and analysis
Optimization Tips
- Use system messages for consistent behavior
- Leverage cached inputs for repeated context
- Set appropriate max_tokens to control costs
- Use structured outputs (JSON) for better parsing
- Implement proper error handling and retries
GPT-4o offers the best balance of capability and cost for most production applications. Consider GPT-4o mini for high-volume, simpler tasks.
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