Head-to-head · frontier vs frontier

GPT-5.2 Vision vs o4 Turbo: which model should you choose?

We compared GPT-5.2 Vision and o4 Turbo on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. GPT-5.2 Vision has the stronger average benchmark score; o4 Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.

OpenAI

GPT-5.2 Vision

GPT-5.2 Vision is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $19.03 per million input tokens and $85.72 per million output tokens, and averages 87.4 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$19.03 / 1M
Output
$85.72 / 1M
Context
1,000,000
Avg score
87.4
Open weights
No
Full GPT-5.2 Vision page
OpenAI

o4 Turbo

o4 Turbo is a frontier model from OpenAI. It offers a 2,000,000-token context window, costs $19.34 per million input tokens and $82.19 per million output tokens, and averages 86.6 across the index's benchmark suite.

Input
$19.34 / 1M
Output
$82.19 / 1M
Context
2,000,000
Avg score
86.6
Open weights
No
Full o4 Turbo page

Specification comparison

SpecGPT-5.2 Visiono4 TurboEdge
Input price / 1M$19.03$19.34A
Output price / 1M$85.72$82.19B
Context window1,000,0002,000,000B
Max output16,3848,192A
Average score87.486.6A
Arena Elo1484.31468.1A
Open weightsNoNoTie

Benchmark comparison

GPT-5.2 Vision wins 9, o4 Turbo wins 3, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.

BenchmarkGPT-5.2 Visiono4 TurboGapWinner
MMLU-Pro89.588.11.4GPT-5.2 Vision
GPQA Diamond82.184.82.7o4 Turbo
SWE-bench Verified78.878.40.4GPT-5.2 Vision
HumanEval91.291.00.2GPT-5.2 Vision
MATH-50092.991.71.2GPT-5.2 Vision
AIME 202585.785.90.2o4 Turbo
LiveCodeBench83.480.13.3GPT-5.2 Vision
IFEval93.992.61.3GPT-5.2 Vision
TruthfulQA85.388.83.5o4 Turbo
HellaSwag94.691.33.3GPT-5.2 Vision
MMMU84.479.64.8GPT-5.2 Vision
Arena Elo1484.31468.116.2GPT-5.2 Vision

Price analysis

On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, GPT-5.2 Vision costs about $35.70 per million tokens and o4 Turbo costs about $35.05. o4 Turbo is roughly 2% cheaper than GPT-5.2 Vision. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.

o4 Turbo has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens, compared with 1,000,000 for GPT-5.2 Vision. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.

Verdict

Across 12 shared benchmarks, GPT-5.2 Vision wins 9, o4 Turbo wins 3, and 0 are tied. On the index average, GPT-5.2 Vision leads o4 Turbo by 0.8 points (87.4 versus 86.6).

The price picture favours o4 Turbo. The context picture favours o4 Turbo. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.

If you need a single default, start with GPT-5.2 Vision for quality-sensitive work and o4 Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

Choose GPT-5.2 Vision if

  • You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
  • You need the larger 16,384-token output limit.

Choose o4 Turbo if

  • Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
  • You need the larger 2,000,000-token context window.

FAQ

Is GPT-5.2 Vision better than o4 Turbo?

On the index average, GPT-5.2 Vision leads o4 Turbo by 0.8 points (87.4 versus 86.6). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. GPT-5.2 Vision wins 9 benchmarks, o4 Turbo wins 3.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5.2 Vision or o4 Turbo?

o4 Turbo is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $35.05 per million tokens, versus $35.70 for GPT-5.2 Vision.

Which has the larger context window?

o4 Turbo has the larger context window at 2,000,000 tokens. GPT-5.2 Vision has 1,000,000 tokens.

Are these models open weights?

GPT-5.2 Vision is proprietary; o4 Turbo is proprietary.

Which should I choose for production?

If you need a single default, start with GPT-5.2 Vision for quality-sensitive work and o4 Turbo for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.

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