Azure AI Foundry vs OpenAI
Same workloads, both price lists, refreshed daily. List prices tie on nearly all 30 shared line items today, so the choice comes down to platform differences (routing, limits, tooling), summarized below.
Azure AI Foundry
OpenAI models with Azure enterprise controls plus a broad third-party model catalog. The compliance-friendly way to run GPT-class models.
- Azure compliance/enterprise controls
- OpenAI models with SLAs
- Provisioned throughput
OpenAI
The GPT and o-series API. Deepest ecosystem and tooling; pricing at the premium end but with aggressive batch and cached-input discounts.
- Frontier models
- Batch API at 50% off
- Prompt caching discounts
Shared models, priced by both
List prices refreshed 2026-08-23 ยท input $/1M tokens| Model | Azure AI Foundry in/out | OpenAI in/out | Cheaper input |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5 Nano | $0.050 / $0.400 | $0.050 / $0.400 | tie |
| GPT-4.1 Nano | $0.100 / $0.400 | $0.100 / $0.400 | tie |
| GPT-4o-Mini | $0.150 / $0.600 | $0.150 / $0.600 | tie |
| GPT-5.4 Nano | $0.200 / $1.25 | $0.200 / $1.25 | tie |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | $0.200 / $1.20 | $0.200 / $1.20 | tie |
| GPT-5 Mini | $0.250 / $2.00 | $0.250 / $2.00 | tie |
| GPT-4.1 Mini | $0.400 / $1.60 | $0.400 / $1.60 | tie |
| GPT-3.5 Turbo | $0.500 / $1.50 | $0.500 / $1.50 | tie |
| GPT Audio Mini | $0.600 / $2.40 | $0.600 / $2.40 | tie |
| GPT-5.4 Mini | $0.750 / $4.50 | $0.750 / $4.50 | tie |
| o3 Mini | $1.10 / $4.40 | $1.10 / $4.40 | tie |
| o4 Mini | $1.10 / $4.40 | $1.10 / $4.40 | tie |
| GPT-5 | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.1 | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-5-Chat | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.1-Chat | $1.25 / $10.00 | $1.25 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.2 | $1.75 / $14.00 | $1.75 / $14.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.2 Chat | $1.75 / $14.00 | $1.75 / $14.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.3-Chat | $1.75 / $14.00 | $1.75 / $14.00 | tie |
| GPT-4.1 | $2.00 / $8.00 | $2.00 / $8.00 | tie |
| O3 | $2.00 / $8.00 | $2.00 / $8.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | $2.00 / $12.00 | $2.00 / $12.00 | tie |
| GPT-4o | $2.50 / $10.00 | $2.50 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-5.4 | $2.50 / $15.00 | $2.50 / $15.00 | tie |
| GPT Audio | $2.50 / $10.00 | $2.50 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-Audio-1.5 | $2.50 / $10.00 | $2.50 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-4o-Audio-Preview | $2.50 / $10.00 | $2.50 / $10.00 | tie |
| GPT-4o-Mini-Audio-Preview | $2.50 / $10.00 | $0.150 / $0.600 | OpenAI |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | $5.00 / $30.00 | $4.00 / $20.00 | OpenAI |
| GPT-5.5 | $5.00 / $30.00 | $5.00 / $30.00 | tie |
Cheaper-on-count is a tally of listed prices, not a quality verdict: throughput, reliability and quantization differ between providers. Disclosure.