Claude 4.5 Haiku vs GPT-5 Mini: pricing & cost comparison
On input tokens, GPT-5 Mini is the cheaper of the two — 75% less per million ($1 vs $0.25). On output, GPT-5 Mini is 60% cheaper ($5 vs $2) — and since output is usually the dominant cost driver, that gap matters more than it looks.
Side by side
| Claude 4.5 Haiku | GPT-5 Mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $1 | $0.25 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $5 | $2 |
| Context window | 200,000 | 400,000 |
| Token-count accuracy | ±2% | exact |
| Cost — 10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens | $0.02 | $0.0065 |
What a real request costs
Take a representative turn — 10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens. Claude 4.5 Haiku comes to $0.02, GPT-5 Mini to $0.0065. Across 100,000 requests that's a $1350 swing in favour of GPT-5 Mini. To run the numbers on your actual prompt, paste it into the calculator and toggle Compare across all models.
Which should you pick?
These are different vendors, so a switch means a different API and a slightly different tokenizer — budget a small calibration buffer. GPT-5 Mini give exact counts; the others land within a few percent. See the full breakdown on the dedicated pages for Claude 4.5 Haiku and GPT-5 Mini.
FAQ
- Is Claude 4.5 Haiku or GPT-5 Mini cheaper?
- For a typical request (10,000 input + 2,000 output tokens), GPT-5 Mini is cheaper — about 68% less, or roughly $1350 saved per 100,000 requests. Claude 4.5 Haiku runs $1/$5 per 1M input/output tokens; GPT-5 Mini runs $0.25/$2.
- Which has the larger context window?
- GPT-5 Mini, at 400,000 tokens versus 200,000.
- How accurate are these token counts?
- Claude 4.5 Haiku: Approximated with cl100k_base — drift typically <2% on English and code. GPT-5 Mini: Exact tokenization via the canonical OpenAI vocab (o200k_base). The dollar math itself is exact once the token count is known.