Heads up: Web Search Tool Billing Can Be Higher Than You Expect (Here’s Why)

Model token usage is billed separately from the web search tool. The web search tool is a stand alone tool that you can call via the responses api or via using a model such as gpt-4o-search-preview in the chat completions API.

There is a context setting in the web search tool, but they just charge differently based on low, medium, or high context. Not based on actual token usage.