I only tried a few conversations in the playground, just small ones asking about a bedtime story, for a few minutes or so. Nothing special. Yet, these tests already set me back $3. With the current pricing model, integrating the Realtime API into our SaaS applications seems unfeasible. I can’t see developers launching applications that depend on the Realtime API while offering users unlimited access to explore its features. The costs are just too high to justify any subscription model for end users. When this basic usecase already set me back $3, I can’t imagine how much this will cost when implementing tool calling and more advanced usecases :sweat_smile: While I appreciate that quality services come with a price, at this rate, it feels more like an impressive tech demo rather than a viable solution for widespread implementation. The pricing would need to drop by at least 10 times to make it truly accessible.

loved the experience but can not agree with prices. Can’t be budget.

I did some testing with an agent we currently use in production with text only. The costs are currently way to high to be able to use it in production. Looking at salaries in The Netherlands, the Realtime API is 2x the cost of a human in our test! [image]

Just wanted to add my own experience, i think there must be an issue somewhere , either in the usage graph, billing system, idk. I just talked a couple minutes with Real Time API 11 requests Input Tokens 36k ( I Did not talk 36k tokens, probably around 2k max) Output tokens 1.5k Cost 14.80$ So now let’s imagine I was able to speak those 36k tokens, ( which i did not ), using open AI pricing, should have cost 3.6$, output of 1.5k should have cost 0.3$ , so even in that scenario, should have cost 4$ not 14.8$. That it does make no sense.

Yeah, that is why I am keeping a distance from Realtime APIs. Hope they cut prices soon.

I work for an insurance company and see many use cases for this but the price is way to high for this to ever go into production. Has there been any feedback from OpenAI on this? Is the pricing currently just bugged?

I genuinely want to build apps using the realtime API but just prototyping it cost me $40+ already. Literally just from trying different prompts and testing my code.

I’m also looking for some feedback from OpenAI on this. It seems like many people have essential questions that haven’t been answered.

There are no bugs with the RealTime API pricing. People just aren’t taking into consideration the fundamental process of conversation management in all LLMs, or how the interruption feature works. Historically OpenAI has released a product as a preview and then later manage to drop the price while increasing the quality. The price should not be a factor in why you aren’t prototyping this feature. As of right now, I would consider for anyone using this to have an intelligent switch mechanism between RealTime and the standard STT->TTS paradigm.

@anon10827405, consider the following: The STT>TTS paradigm (the old way), is akin to dialup internet in the context of providing a seamless, realtime speech experience. No questions about it. The RealTime concept is a paradigm shift (the new way). For a speech application to deliver an experience worthy of someone paying for it, demands this shift, especially when the world has gotten a taste of what AI powered speech can really do (e.g 11Labs, OpenAI Advanced Voice etc.) and for a commercially viable product, you can’t possibly be wanting to settle for the “old way” - I understand, its needed as a backup nonetheless, but we are meant to be looking forward to things not backwards. As for the pricing, if you look at this thread, you’ll note that OpenAI recognizes the way the API is currently priced, with the primary issue being how conversation tokens (audio in/out) are carried forward from turn to turn. This results in massive inflation of token count and a disregard for the caching possibilities. There are workarounds. There are positives in trying to work around this issue and then there’s the ongoing conversation from OpenAI talking about rolling out caching changes in the next couple of weeks. Unlness you’re funded for R&D, I think for a lot of devs on this forum, prototyping cost has to make sense. Right now, its tough when each 3-4 min call would set you back anywhere from $6-$16 depending on the structure of the call. Considering your suggestion of an intelligent switch, it would be great to learn more about intelligently handling the latency resulting from a switch like that.

Realtime API extremely expensive

API Feedback

liquidshadowsmk October 29, 2024, 7:59am 58

Hi @johan.holmberg You might find this thread helpful:
Realtime API Pricing: VAD and Token Accumulation - A KILLER

Topic		Replies	Views
New Realtime API voices and cache pricing Announcements realtime , prompt-caching	26	14012	September 2, 2025
Realtime API Pricing: VAD and Token Accumulation - A KILLER Community token , pricing , tokenization , realtime	22	5959	September 4, 2025
Introducing the Realtime API Announcements	27	9845	January 16, 2025
Realtime API pricing is wrong, will overcharge API realtime	36	5733	January 15, 2025
Streaming from Text-to-Speech api API api , python , tts	53	57750	January 21, 2025

Realtime API extremely expensive

Related topics