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Gemini 1.5 Pro vs GPT-4o: Token Pricing & Caching Comparison

Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro features an industry-leading 2 million token context window. However, filling that context window is expensive. Let's compare the token pricing, prompt caching, and volume discount math between Gemini 1.5 Pro and GPT-4o.

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1. Base Pricing Tiers: Pro vs. Flash vs. GPT-4o

GPT-4o costs $2.50 / MTok input and $10.00 / MTok output. Gemini 1.5 Pro costs $1.25 / MTok input (under 128k context) and $5.00 / MTok output. However, for prompts over 128k tokens, Gemini's pricing doubles to $2.50 / MTok input and $10.00 / MTok output. Gemini 1.5 Flash offers a budget option at $0.075 / MTok input.

2. Caching Implementation and Cost Savings

Gemini 1.5 Pro supports prompt caching, charging a flat 50% discount on input tokens that hit the cache (requiring contexts of 32k+ tokens). GPT-4o also provides a 50% cache discount but does not require a minimum context size, making GPT-4o's caching more accessible for smaller prompts.

3. Volume and Context Size Decisions

If your context size stays below 128k tokens, Gemini 1.5 Pro is 50% cheaper than GPT-4o. If you need to build RAG models with massive documents, Gemini's 2 million token window is essential, though you should use Gemini 1.5 Flash to prevent API costs from escalating.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Gemini 1.5 Pro cheaper than GPT-4o?

Yes. For context lengths under 128k, Gemini 1.5 Pro is exactly half the price of GPT-4o ($1.25 vs $2.50 for input, $5.00 vs $10.00 for output).

Why does Gemini pricing double at 128k?

Processing extremely long contexts increases GPU memory allocation and overhead, so Google applies a surcharge to cover hardware compute limits.