The most common pre-adoption question is "is Claude cheaper than OpenAI for my workload?" The answer depends entirely on cache hit rate and output-to-input ratio. Here's the math.
Tier-to-tier per-million-token pricing
Anthropic
Input
Output
OpenAI rough peer
Input
Output
Opus 4.7
$15
$75
GPT-4o (premium)
$5
$15
Sonnet 4.6
$3
$15
GPT-4o
$5
$15
Haiku 4.5
$1
$5
GPT-4o mini
$0.15
$0.60
(Use current vendor pages for live numbers; this is illustrative.)
Where Claude wins on price
Prompt caching at 10% of input — Anthropic's cache discount is steeper. Long-context RAG workloads where the same docs are read many times tilt strongly to Sonnet.
Batch API at 50% — offline scoring and eval pipelines.
Where OpenAI wins on price
Cheap-tier dominance — GPT-4o mini is meaningfully cheaper than Haiku for simple classification.
Short-output workloads with no caching — input pricing alone is closer; the Sonnet vs GPT-4o comparison narrows.
The right way to compare
Don't pick on per-token price. Pick on cost per resolved task after you've measured task success rate. A 2× cheaper model that you have to call 3× because of failures is a worse deal. The Cost Calculator handles the per-token side; you still need eval data for the rest.
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude cheaper than GPT-4 for most workloads?
At the mid-tier (Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-4o), pricing is similar on input but Claude's prompt caching at 10% of input gives it a large edge on workloads with long reused contexts like RAG. At the cheap tier, GPT-4o mini is cheaper than Haiku 4.5 for simple tasks.
Does Claude have a context caching feature like Gemini?
Yes — Anthropic calls it prompt caching. You mark a prefix with cache_control, and subsequent requests that share that prefix pay 10% of the standard input token rate. The mechanics differ from Gemini's implementation but the cost benefit is similar.
Can I use both Claude and OpenAI APIs in the same app?
Yes. Many teams use Claude for tasks where it outperforms (long-context reasoning, agentic flows) and OpenAI for tasks where it fits better. Both support standard REST APIs and popular SDK wrappers. The main cost consideration is that you pay both providers separately.