GPT-4o Review: OpenAI's Multimodal Flagship
GPT-4o is the best all-around AI model for most users. It handles text, images, voice, and code in one model, with free access in ChatGPT and competitive API pricing at $2.50/$10 per million tokens. It’s not the absolute best at any single task — Claude beats it on writing, o3 beats it on reasoning — but nothing else matches its versatility.
Key Specs
GPT-4o launched in May 2024 as OpenAI’s “omni” model. The “o” stands for omni — it natively processes text, vision, and audio without separate pipelines. This makes it faster and more coherent across modalities than GPT-4’s bolt-on approach.
- Context window: 128,000 tokens (~300 pages)
- Input pricing: $2.50 per million tokens
- Output pricing: $10.00 per million tokens
- Knowledge cutoff: October 2023 (with web browsing for current info)
- Multimodal: Text, vision, audio (input and output)
Benchmark Performance
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Claude Opus 4 | Gemini 2.5 Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arena Elo | 1360 | 1380 | 1355 |
| MMLU | 90.2% | 92.0% | 91.5% |
| HumanEval | 91.0% | 93.7% | 89.2% |
| GPQA | 68.7% | 74.9% | 71.3% |
GPT-4o holds its own against newer models, though Claude Opus 4 now leads on every benchmark. The practical gap is smaller than the numbers suggest — in our testing, both handle 95% of tasks equally well.
What GPT-4o Does Best
Multimodal understanding. Point your camera at a menu in a foreign language and get a translation. Upload a chart and ask for analysis. Share a screenshot of an error message and get debugging help. No other model handles visual input as seamlessly.
Voice conversations. Advanced Voice Mode is GPT-4o’s standout feature. It handles interruptions, understands emotion, and responds with natural cadence. In our testing, it felt like talking to a knowledgeable colleague rather than an AI.
Ecosystem. GPTs (custom chatbots), Code Interpreter, web browsing, DALL-E integration, plugin marketplace. ChatGPT is a platform, not just a chatbot.
Limitations
- Context window: 128K tokens vs Claude’s 200K and Gemini’s 1M
- Writing quality: Claude produces more natural, less formulaic text
- Reasoning depth: o1 and o3 significantly outperform GPT-4o on complex reasoning
- Cost at scale: API pricing is competitive but not the cheapest
Who Should Use GPT-4o
GPT-4o is the right choice for users who need one AI that does everything. If you primarily work with text documents, Claude is likely better. If you need deep reasoning for math or science, o3 is better. But if you want the best all-rounder with the largest feature set, GPT-4o is it.
Consumer: Free in ChatGPT, $20/month for Plus (no rate limits).
Developer: $2.50/$10 per M tokens — the best price-to-capability ratio for a flagship model.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does GPT-4o cost? ▼
GPT-4o is free in ChatGPT with rate limits. ChatGPT Plus at $20/month removes limits. API pricing is $2.50 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens — roughly $0.003 per 1,000 words of output.
What can GPT-4o do that GPT-4 couldn't? ▼
GPT-4o is natively multimodal — it processes text, images, and audio in a single model rather than stitching separate systems together. This makes it faster, cheaper, and better at understanding context across modalities. It also has Advanced Voice Mode with natural conversation.
Is GPT-4o better than Claude? ▼
GPT-4o is more versatile (image generation, voice, code execution, web browsing). Claude Opus 4 scores higher on benchmarks and is better for long documents (200K vs 128K context). For most users, both are excellent — GPT-4o wins on features, Claude wins on text quality.