AI cost · Microsoft
Azure OpenAI cost: what you actually pay
Token rates mirror OpenAI's direct API almost exactly, so the real cost lever isn't the sticker price — it's Global vs. Data Zone vs. Regional deployment premiums and Provisioned Throughput (PTU) minimum commitments that bill hourly whether or not you use them.
Public pricing
| Plan | Price | Billing | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go (Global Standard) | CustomMirrors OpenAI's direct API rates for Global deployments; Data Zone/Regional deployments price separately. | usage | Pay-per-token access to deployed models |
| Provisioned Throughput (PTU) - monthly reservation | $2,448 / per PTU/moApproximate starting rate per third-party analysis; varies by model/region/deployment type. Minimum purchase is 15-50 PTUs depending on deployment. | custom | Dedicated reserved capacity with predictable latency |
| Provisioned Throughput (PTU) - yearly reservation | CustomRoughly 35% cheaper than the monthly reservation rate; exact figure requires the Azure pricing calculator for your model/region. | custom | Same capacity as monthly PTU with a longer-term discount |
| Batch API | Custom24-hour turnaround, asynchronous processing. | usage | — |
Token rates (USD per 1M tokens)
| Model | Input | Output | Cache read |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4oGlobal Standard deployment; Data Zone/Regional pricing can differ for the identical model. | $2.5 | $10 | — |
| GPT-4o miniCheapest mainstream general-purpose model in the family. | $0.15 | $0.6 | — |
| GPT-4.1Cached input ~75% off list. GPT-5 (Global Standard) runs about $1.25/$10 input/output; GPT-5 Pro up to $15/$120. | $2 | $8 | $0.5 |
Azure's Global Standard token prices track OpenAI's direct API essentially 1:1 (GPT-4o $2.50/$10, GPT-4o mini $0.15/$0.60, GPT-4.1 $2/$8, GPT-5 ~$1.25/$10 per MTok). Data Zone and Regional deployments can price the same model differently. Provisioned Throughput Units reserve dedicated capacity billed hourly (or via 1-month/1-year reservation, ~35% cheaper annually) regardless of traffic; minimum purchases of 15-50 PTUs mean an idle reservation can run into the tens of thousands of dollars a month. Cached-input discounts (roughly 50-90%, model-dependent) only help prompts with a genuinely reused prefix.
Approximate — verify before relying on it. Last updated: 2026-07-22. Sourced from Azure OpenAI Service Pricing (official) ↗, Microsoft Learn: Provisioned Throughput (PTU) costs and billing ↗.
Where the real Azure OpenAI cost hides
The sticker is the smallest part of the story. For Azure OpenAI, these are the line items that quietly inflate the bill:
- GPT-4o ($2.50/$10) vs. GPT-4o mini ($0.15/$0.60) differ by ~17x — defaulting new features to the full-size model instead of mini/nano tiers is the most common overspend.
- Regional and Data Zone deployments can carry different per-token prices than Global Standard for the identical model — teams price-check once at launch and don't notice the delta after a region migration.
- PTUs bill by the reserved unit-hour for the entire commitment term regardless of whether traffic shows up — minimum purchases (15-50 PTUs) can cost tens of thousands per month sitting mostly idle during ramp-up.
- Output tokens price 4-8x input on nearly every model, and reasoning models (o-series, GPT-5 Pro) add hidden 'reasoning tokens' billed as output even when never shown to the user.
- Cached-input discounts require a stable, reused prompt prefix within the cache TTL — apps with per-request-unique system prompts get none of the caching discount they assume is already applied.
What an audit finds on Azure OpenAI
Teams provision GPT-4o (or GPT-5) globally for every workload, skip the mini/nano tiers and prompt caching, and either overpay on-demand by 15-20x for simple tasks or lock in a PTU commitment before traffic volume justifies it.
Azure OpenAI pricing FAQ
Is Azure OpenAI more expensive than OpenAI's own API?
Per-token list prices for Global Standard deployments are effectively the same as OpenAI's direct API; Azure's premium shows up in PTU minimums, Data Zone/Regional surcharges, and the surrounding Azure bill, not the token rate itself.
What's a PTU and when do I need one?
A Provisioned Throughput Unit reserves dedicated model capacity billed hourly regardless of usage. It only pays off at sustained volume (commonly cited around 150M+ tokens/month) — below that, pay-as-you-go is cheaper.
Does prompt caching apply automatically?
Yes for supported models, but only when the prompt has a stable, reused prefix; cache hits run 50-90% cheaper than base input, cache misses bill at full price.
What is Azure OpenAI really costing you?
Spendassay connects your Azure OpenAI spend to actual usage and engineering output — a proof-level AI cost report with the wasted dollars named. Neutral across every AI vendor.
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