o4 Mini Deep Research
by OpenAI · openai/o4-mini-deep-research · #258 cheapest of 325 paid models
Prices updated Jul 22, 2026, 1:35 AM UTC · refreshed hourly
o4-mini-deep-research is OpenAI's faster, more affordable deep research model—ideal for tackling complex, multi-step research tasks. Note: This model always uses the 'web_search' tool which adds additional cost.
Compare vs:Claude Sonnet 5Claude Opus 4.6Claude Haiku 4.5Gemini 3.6 Flash
Pricing
Input
$2.00
per 1M tokens
Output
$8.00
per 1M tokens
Blended (3:1)
$3.50
3 input : 1 output
Cache read
$0.50
per 1M cached tokens
Cache write
—
per 1M tokens
Cache & batch economics
Effective prices for o4 Mini Deep Research with prompt caching.
| Cache hit rate | Effective blended $/1M | Example request* | vs no cache |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | $3.50 | $0.212 | — |
| 50% | $2.94 | $0.137 | −35% |
| 90% | $2.49 | $0.077 | −64% |
*Example: 100K sticky context + 2K new input + 1K output. Batch discount is an approximate 50% off list rates for this provider’s batch API. Confirm on the vendor’s pricing page.
What a request costs
| Workload | Input tokens | Output tokens | Cost / request | Cost / 1K requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short chat message | 500 | 300 | $0.0034 | $3.40 |
| Document summary | 8,000 | 1,000 | $0.024 | $24.00 |
| Codebase question (RAG) | 30,000 | 2,000 | $0.076 | $76.00 |
| Long-context analysis | 150,000 | 5,000 | $0.34 | $340.00 |
Specs
Context window
200K
tokens
Max output
100K
tokens
Input modalities
file, image, text
Tokenizer
GPT