GPT Image 2.5 pricing: what does an image actually cost?

OpenAI lists identical token rates for GPT Image 2.5 Flare and Sunburst: $5 per million text input tokens, $8 per million image input tokens and $30 per million image output tokens. Cached inputs have separate rates. These are token prices, not a fixed price for every generated image.

Checked September 9, 2026. OpenAI’s current image generation guide includes a GPT Image 2.5 output-token calculator. It estimates only part of the bill; older GPT Image 2 per-image estimates cannot simply be transferred to 2.5.

Official GPT Image 2.5 token prices

All amounts are USD from the official OpenAI model pages. They do not establish Ofox pricing or another gateway’s invoice. Check the rates and billing categories of the provider you actually call.

The image models output images rather than text. If a conversational model invokes image generation through the Responses API, its usage is billed separately from the image generation. The table above is not the total cost of a multi-tool conversation.

Calculate the image-model portion of a request

Separate actual usage into disjoint billing categories. Cached tokens must not also be counted as uncached input:

cost in USD = (
    uncached_text_input_tokens * 5
  + cached_text_input_tokens * 1.25
  + uncached_image_input_tokens * 8
  + cached_image_input_tokens * 2
  + image_output_tokens * 30
) / 1_000_000

Use your provider’s usage definitions. If a total input field includes cached tokens, subtract the cached portion where appropriate before applying uncached rates. Reusing the same image does not by itself prove that a cached-input discount applies.

For arithmetic only, suppose a request used 1,000 uncached text input tokens, 2,000 uncached image input tokens and 4,000 image output tokens, with no caching or other charges:

Those token counts are hypothetical. This is not a measured quote for a particular model, resolution or quality setting. It shows how the arithmetic works once usage is known.

What does the official cost calculator include?

The image generation guide includes a GPT Image 2.5 calculator for estimated image output tokens and output cost. Its scope excludes text input, image input and streaming partial images. It should therefore be treated as an output estimate, not an all-inclusive request invoice.

OpenAI’s model pages also state that rates match GPT Image 2 while the GPT Image 2 calculator does not estimate 2.5 consumption. These statements are compatible: matching rates do not make an older consumption estimate valid for a new model.

When recording an estimate, save the selected model, dimensions, quality, calculator date and excluded items. For an application budget, add the other billable components and validate against actual usage.

Why equal rates do not guarantee equal image costs

Two models can consume different token quantities to complete the same task. The number of correction attempts can differ too. Neither equal token rates nor Flare’s speed-oriented positioning proves that Flare costs less.

A useful workflow metric is:

cost per accepted image = total billed cost of evaluated attempts
                          / images meeting the acceptance criteria

For example, if ten attempts cost $1.41 in total but only six images are usable, cost per accepted image is $0.235. That is another arithmetic illustration, not a measured success rate. Include billed retries and corrections; do not assume all failed requests are billed or all retries are free.

A multi-turn edit may involve reference-image input and conversational-model usage in addition to the final image output. Budget for the workflow your users perform, not just the last file they download.

What to measure before committing a budget

Record the provider, exact model ID, output dimensions, quality setting, reference-image count, returned usage categories and number of accepted results. Sample both common and difficult tasks. Report a range across those tasks rather than a single attractive example.

Use Flare vs Sunburst to choose a first candidate, the API guide to implement generation and editing, and the migration checklist to compare against your existing GPT Image 2 workflow. No paid inference benchmark was run for this pricing article.

Sources

• OpenAI: Flare pricing
• OpenAI: Sunburst pricing
• OpenAI: image generation and output-cost calculator