Skip to content

o4

openai/o4
Reasoning

OpenAI's deliberate reasoning flagship, the ceiling for hard math and science problems.

Model overview

Context window

300K

tokens

Input price

quoted on request

Output price

quoted on request

Weekly volume

tokens / week

Open weights

No

API only

Capabilities

4

of 11 tags

Description

o4 is a reasoning model from OpenAI. Webparam does not stock this model yet and can source it on request — tell us what you need it for and we will come back with availability and a price. OpenAI’s stated focus is the reference point for frontier capability. The weights are not published, so it is API-only.

Capabilities

Reasoning
Spends extra billed tokens thinking before it answers, trading latency and cost for accuracy.
Tool calling
Calls functions you define and returns their arguments as structured data, the basis of agents.
JSON mode
Constrains the response to valid JSON matching a schema you supply.
Streaming
Emits tokens as they are generated, so answers appear progressively rather than all at once.

Strengths & weaknesses

Strengths

  • Highest reasoning ceiling available
  • Excellent tool use mid-reasoning
  • Strong coding

Weaknesses

  • The most expensive model in the catalogue
  • Slow for interactive use

Pricing

Free
Pricing for o4, per 1M tokens
RatePriceUnit
Input$0.00per 1M tokens
Output not charged

Free at the point of use; fair-use rate limits apply to the free tier. Illustrative placeholder pricing.

Context window

300Ktokens

covers prompt and response together, so a long input leaves less room for the answer.

300K tokens against a peer range of 128K to 300K, median 182K. Compared across 8 reasoning models.

Supported features

Feature support for o4
FeatureSupport
Tool callingSupported
JSON modeSupported
StreamingSupported
Vision inputNot supported
Audio inputNot supported
Long contextNot supported
Open weightsNot supported
ReasoningSupported
Fine-tunableNot supported
BatchNot supported
CachingNot supported

Example use cases

  • Hardest problems only

    Highest reasoning ceiling available

  • Scientific analysis

    Excellent tool use mid-reasoning

  • Verification of critical outputs

    Strong coding

Comparison

o4 compared with Claude Opus 4.5 and DeepSeek R1
Attributeo4Claude Opus 4.5DeepSeek R1
Context window300K200K164K
Input price$0.00$0.00$0.00
Output price not charged not charged not charged
Tool callingSupportedSupportedSupported
JSON modeSupportedSupportedNot supported
Vision inputNot supportedSupportedNot supported
Open weightsNot supportedNot supportedSupported
Prompt cachingNot supportedSupportedNot supported

Best value in each row is highlighted. Illustrative placeholder data.

Provider information

View OpenAI
OpenAI4 models

OpenAI · San Francisco, United States · est. 2015

OpenAI set the template the whole industry follows, from GPT's scaling curves to the API-first business model every provider now imitates. Its GPT-5 generation and o-series reasoning models remain the benchmark others measure against, and its developer platform is the most imitated interface in AI.

Recent releases

    Documentation

    Frequently asked questions

    Input is billed at $0.00 per 1M tokens, and there is no separate output charge. Every figure on this page is an illustrative placeholder.