OpenAI's expensive GPT-4.5 might vanish from the API, leaving developers in limbo

OpenAI's latest language model GPT-4.5 might not remain available through the API long-term, which could create problems for developers who have built their applications specifically around this model's capabilities.

According to OpenAI, GPT-4.5 costs substantially more than GPT-4o due to its massive size and computational requirements. The company has explicitly stated it isn't meant to replace GPT-4o. At $75 per million input tokens and $150 per million output tokens, GPT-4.5 is dramatically more expensive than alternatives like GPT-4o ($2.50/$10) or o1 ($15/$60).

OpenAI already questioned the long-term API availability of its particularly powerful but expensive model when it was first announced, saying it needs to balance supporting current capabilities with developing future models.

It remains unclear whether GPT-4.5 truly offers unique capabilities that other models like GPT-4o can't provide. OpenAI is actively seeking user feedback about whether GPT-4.5 delivers unique value for specific use cases. Developers who build applications exclusively around GPT-4.5 might face challenges if the model is discontinued.

Is a GPT-4.5 Turbo coming - and is it worth it?

One possibility is that OpenAI might release an optimized, more cost-effective version, perhaps called "GPT-4.5 Turbo." The company has used similar strategies with previous models like GPT-4 and GPT-3.5.

But given that GPT-4.5 already offers only modest improvements over GPT-4o, it's questionable whether a streamlined version would offer meaningful advantages over other models from OpenAI or its competitors. While previous turbo versions of GPT-4 did offer faster speeds and lower prices, they were typically inferior to the original GPT-4 in terms of quality, although this is a heated debate and there are people who prefer the turbo models.

When comparing GPT-4.5 and GPT-4o directly, the performance gap appears quite narrow: GPT-4.5 outperforms GPT-4o in just 63.2 percent of professional queries, 57 percent of everyday queries, and only 56.8 percent of creative tasks. This raises questions about GPT-4.5's cost-effectiveness for most use cases.