282s to generate12,730 output tokens
GPT-5: Real Outputs, Benchmarks & Cost (2026)
OpenAI's flagship chat model, the mainline successor to GPT-4.
More about GPT-5
OpenAI’s mainline reasoning model and the successor to GPT-4. Still real, still strong — now one tier below GPT-5.5.
Maker
OpenAIReleased
2025
Input price
$1.25 / 1M
Output price
$10 / 1M
What is GPT-5?
GPT-5 is the model most people mean when they say “GPT-5”: OpenAI’s general-purpose reasoning flagship that replaced the GPT-4 line. It runs with adjustable reasoning effort and remains a heavyweight on open-ended, multi-step tasks. As of mid-2026 it sits just behind GPT-5.5 as OpenAI’s mainline model, and it’s one of the five models in our Dream Home showdown — where it produced a complete, original voxel build from a single prompt.
Strengths
- ✓Strong on long, open-ended reasoning tasks — held its own against newer flagships in our showdowns.
- ✓Adjustable reasoning effort lets you trade latency for depth.
- ✓Cheaper per token than the newer GPT-5.5 while staying close in quality.
Trade-offs
- ✗Superseded as OpenAI’s mainline model by GPT-5.5.
- ✗High-effort reasoning runs are slow — we saw ~4–5 minutes on heavy generative tasks.
- ✗Reasoning tokens bill as output tokens, so a “short” answer can cost more than it looks.
What GPT-5 actually produces
Real, unedited outputs from GPT-5 in our model showdowns — same brief, same constraints as every other model, one shot each.
“I want to work where stone, water, and sky meet: a quiet, light-filled studio cantilevered over a cold cove with a glass roof and a little tree to keep me company. It’s a place for writing, tinkering, and slipping down a ladder for a swim at sunset.”
290s to generate23,056 output tokens