GPT-4o Review: Features, Benchmarks & Pricing

GPT-4o is the model OpenAI introduced on May 13, 2024, and the "o" stands for omni. It was the first OpenAI model to handle text, images, and audio natively in one system, matching GPT-4 Turbo's intelligence while running twice as fast at half the price. It also brought GPT-4-level AI to free ChatGPT users for the first time.

This GPT-4o review covers what the model is, what its benchmarks showed, what it costs, how it compares with GPT-4o mini and GPT-5, and where it stands now that OpenAI has moved on. GPT-4o is still available in Chat Smith on Android, iOS, and the web, so you can use it without a ChatGPT subscription.

GPT-4o is a multimodal model trained end to end across text, vision, and audio. Earlier models such as GPT-4 needed a pipeline of separate models for voice: one to transcribe speech, one to think, and one to read the answer aloud. GPT-4o does all of it in a single network, so it can pick up tone of voice, multiple speakers, and background sounds, and respond with laughter or emotion.

In the API, GPT-4o offers a 128,000-token context window and, in later versions, up to 16,000 output tokens per request. Its knowledge runs to October 2023. It answers directly, without the separate thinking step that later reasoning models introduced.

OpenAI also released a smaller sibling, covered in our GPT-4o mini review. GPT-4o itself was retired from ChatGPT on February 13, 2026, after more than a year as its main model, but it remains available to developers through the OpenAI API.

Four capabilities defined GPT-4o.

GPT-4o can respond to spoken input in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of about 320 milliseconds, close to human response time in conversation. Users can interrupt it mid-sentence, ask it to change its tone, or have it translate between two people speaking different languages.

On text benchmarks, GPT-4o matched or beat its predecessor: 88.7% on MMLU, 90.2% on HumanEval for coding, 76.6% on the MATH benchmark, and 53.6% on GPQA. That put it at or above the level of GPT-4 Turbo in English, while being much faster and cheaper.

GPT-4o scored 69.1% on MMMU, a test of reasoning over images, charts, and diagrams, and 90.5% on MGSM, a multilingual math benchmark. A new tokenizer also made non-English text far more efficient, using up to several times fewer tokens for languages such as Hindi, Arabic, and Korean, which lowered costs for global users.

In March 2025, OpenAI turned on GPT-4o's own image generation in ChatGPT. It handled readable text inside images, followed detailed instructions, and could edit pictures through conversation, sparking a wave of viral styles. That technology later evolved into OpenAI's dedicated GPT Image models, the same kind of engine behind today's AI image generator tools.

The table compares GPT-4o with its smaller sibling and with GPT-5, the model that replaced it as ChatGPT's default. Scores are the ones OpenAI reported at each launch.

GPT-5 is now cheaper per input token and reasons far better, but many people still prefer GPT-4o's conversational style. For deeper head-to-heads, see our GPT-5 vs GPT-4o comparison and GPT-4o vs GPT-4.1 comparison.

GPT-4o launched in the API at $5 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, half the price of GPT-4 Turbo. A later version cut that to $2.50 and $10. In ChatGPT, its availability changed several times:

In Chat Smith, you can keep using GPT-4o without an OpenAI account. Free accounts include limited use, and Chat Smith Pro raises usage limits for $9.99 per month or $39.99 per year.

GPT-4o is no longer part of ChatGPT, and OpenAI's lineup has moved through GPT-5 and several newer generations since. Our full list of ChatGPT models shows where it fits today.

It has no reasoning mode, so it can stumble on multi-step math, logic, and planning that newer models handle well, and its knowledge stops in October 2023. In April 2025, OpenAI also had to roll back a GPT-4o update that made it overly flattering, a reminder to double-check answers that simply agree with you.

Finally, it is no longer the best value. GPT-5 costs less per input token with much stronger reasoning, and GPT-4o's benchmark scores date from 2024, so they say more about its era than about today's options.

If you miss GPT-4o in ChatGPT, you can still use it in Chat Smith on Android, iOS, and the web. Pick it from the model list and start chatting, with no OpenAI account needed.

Use GPT-4o for natural conversation, brainstorming, and questions about images. When a task needs deeper reasoning, switch to GPT-5 or OpenAI's newer GPT-6 Sol in the same chat.

You can also compare GPT-4o's answers with models from other labs, such as Claude Sonnet 5, and keep the one that holds up. For research-heavy questions, the built-in Deep Research feature runs advanced search and reasoning across sources.

GPT-4o changed how people talk to AI: one model for text, images, and voice, fast enough for real conversation, and good enough to make GPT-4-level help free for everyone. Its friendly, natural style is the main reason many users still choose it.

For hard reasoning or current knowledge, newer models are the better pick. You can use GPT-4o and its successors side by side in Chat Smith, an AI chatbot that puts OpenAI's models next to the latest from Anthropic, Google, xAI, and DeepSeek.