o3 vs GPT-5.2

Detailed pricing comparison and cost analysis.

Updated March 2026

Cost Simulator

o3 Cost
$3.60
GPT-5.2 Cost
$4.55
o3 is 21% cheaper
Featureo3GPT-5.2
ProviderOpenAIOpenAI
Input Price (1M)$2.00$1.75
Output Price (1M)$8.00$14.00
Context Window200,000128,000

Verdict

o3 costs $2.00 per 1M input tokens and $8.00 per 1M output tokens. GPT-5.2 costs $1.75 per 1M input tokens and $14.00 per 1M output tokens. GPT-5.2 is 13% cheaper on input tokens than o3. For output tokens, o3 is the more affordable option at $8.00/1M vs $14.00.

On context window, o3 supports 200,000 tokens — meaning it can fit more conversation history, documents, or code in a single request. This matters for RAG pipelines, long document analysis, and agentic workflows where context builds up over many turns.

When to choose o3

  • ✓ Your workload is output-heavy — o3 generates text cheaper
  • ✓ You need a larger context window (200,000 tokens)
  • ✓ You are already integrated with OpenAI

When to choose GPT-5.2

  • ✓ You need the lowest input token cost ($ 1.75/1M)
  • ✓ You are already integrated with OpenAI

Use the calculator above to simulate your specific workload and find the exact break-even point. For most applications, the cheapest model is the one that minimises your total monthly bill given your input-to-output token ratio.