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GPT-5 mini vs Opus 4.8

Budget vs Premium cross-provider showdown — GPT-5 mini is 95% cheaper on input and 92% cheaper on output. When does the premium Opus quality justify the cost?

Pricing data verified: Jun 29, 2026

Specification	GPT-5 mini	Opus 4.8
Input Price (per 1M tokens)	$0.25	$5.00
Output Price (per 1M tokens)	$2.00	$25.00
Context Window	272K tokens	1M tokens
Tier	Budget	Premium
Provider	OpenAI	Anthropic
Input Savings	95% cheaper	Baseline
Output Savings	92% cheaper	Baseline
Cost at 1M input + 500K output	$1.25	$17.50

Calculate Your Exact Costs

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Input Tokens per Request

Output Tokens per Request

Requests per Day

Days per Month

OpenAI

GPT-5 mini

$0.00

per month

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Output cost

Cost per request

Requests/month

Anthropic

Opus 4.8

$0.00

per month

Input cost

Output cost

Cost per request

Requests/month

Which Model for Which Use Case?

Cost-Effective Production

GPT-5 mini delivers excellent quality at $0.25/$2 per million tokens — 95% cheaper on input and 92% cheaper on output than Opus 4.8. For most production workloads including chatbots, code assistants, and content generation, GPT-5 mini is the clear winner.

Best value: GPT-5 mini (92-95% cheaper)

Maximum Reasoning Quality

Opus 4.8 delivers best-in-class reasoning and chain-of-thought capabilities. If your use case demands the absolute highest quality for complex multi-step tasks and cost is secondary, Opus 4.8 delivers premium performance.

Best reasoning: Opus 4.8

Context Window Needs

Opus 4.8 offers 1M context vs GPT-5 mini's 272K — 3.7x more. If your application needs long document processing or large codebase analysis, Opus 4.8 gives you significantly more context, though at 95x the input cost.

Long context: Opus 4.8 (1M vs 272K)

Enterprise Scale

At 1M requests/month with 500K output tokens, GPT-5 mini saves $16.25/month compared to Opus 4.8. For enterprise-scale deployments, the 92-95% cost difference translates to $195/year in savings.

Enterprise: GPT-5 mini saves $195/year

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is GPT-5 mini cheaper than Opus 4.8?

Yes — GPT-5 mini is dramatically cheaper. GPT-5 mini costs $0.25/M input and $2.00/M output, while Opus 4.8 costs $5.00/M input and $25.00/M output. That's 95% cheaper on input and 92% cheaper on output.

Which is better for coding — GPT-5 mini or Opus 4.8?

Opus 4.8 excels at complex reasoning and multi-step coding tasks, while GPT-5 mini offers excellent value at 92-95% lower cost. For most coding work, GPT-5 mini is the better choice unless you need Opus 4.8's superior reasoning for complex multi-step problems.

How much would I save using GPT-5 mini instead of Opus 4.8?

For a workload of 1M input + 500K output tokens/month, GPT-5 mini costs $1.25/month vs Opus 4.8's $17.50/month — saving $16.25/month (93%). At scale (10M input + 5M output), you save $162.50/month — $1,950/year.

When should I choose Opus 4.8 over GPT-5 mini?

Choose Opus 4.8 when: (1) you need the best reasoning quality and chain-of-thought capabilities, (2) you need 1M context window for large documents or codebases, (3) cost is secondary to output quality. For everything else, GPT-5 mini delivers excellent value at 92-95% lower cost.