GPT-4.1
OpenAI·Apr 2025proprietary
GPT-4.1 was OpenAI's April 2025 developer-focused release: no visible chain-of-thought, predictable latency, strong instruction following and a then-novel 1M-token context window. Many production systems still run on it because its behavior is stable and exhaustively documented. For new builds, the GPT-5.x line generally offers better quality per dollar, but GPT-4.1 remains a dependable choice when deterministic latency matters more than peak intelligence.
Benchmark results
Where it shines
- Predictable latency — no hidden reasoning tokens
- 1M-token context window
- Battle-tested in production since early 2025
Alternatives to GPT-4.1
Alibaba's trillion-parameter API flagship — frontier-adjacent quality with strong agentic tool use at mid-tier prices.
Google's November 2025 frontier breakout — 91.9% GPQA Diamond and 37.5% HLE made it the reasoning leader of its generation.
Google's 2025 workhorse flagship — first mainstream thinking model with a 1M context, still widely deployed.
The sparse-attention release that halved DeepSeek's already-lowest-in-class prices while keeping GPT-class quality.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does the GPT-4.1 API cost?
- GPT-4.1 costs $2 per million input tokens and $8 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.5 per million. A workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month costs about $32.00.
- What is the context window of GPT-4.1?
- GPT-4.1 supports a context window of 1,000,000 tokens (1M), with up to 33K output tokens per response.
- Is GPT-4.1 open source?
- No — GPT-4.1 is a proprietary model available through OpenAI's API and partner platforms.
- What are the best alternatives to GPT-4.1?
- The closest alternatives by overall capability are Qwen3-Max, Gemini 3 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Pro, DeepSeek V3.2. See the comparison pages for detailed head-to-head breakdowns.