I hate that models are limited based on spending

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I know that OpenAI limits the model availability based on usage spending but I’m not sure that I understand the reasoning for it.

It seems like you have to be between tier 3-5 to access an O3-mini assistant for example. In my case this is my personal OpenAI account and I work with AI most days at work at the moment (not on the same account). For me to POC or deliver projects I need access to the same models personally that I get professionally. This pattern also hinders very small one-man shops that want to leverage your API for their businesses.

I really like using OpenAI but I can’t see why I’d want to stick with using OpenAI over Genkit, Vertex, Gemini, etc if they provide superior models (to gpt-4o that I have access to in the API).

Anyone know if there’s plans to change this approach or is this just it?

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Welcome to the community!

Models typically trickle down the tiers, so all you’d need to access o3 on tier 1 is probably patience.

Tier 3 is 100 bucks, but 100 bucks is a lot of money in low CoL countries. That said, tier 3 still had to wait several months before getting access to o1. o3 was faster, but likely because it’s a tiny model.

I don’t know if you’re missing out on all that much though. I don’t think that o3-mini will outperform o4-cot. O3 doesn’t come with any multimodal capabilities either, so there’s nothing you’re missing out on that front either.

Hope this helps somewhat :slight_smile:

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