R1 vs GPT-4o

Summary of head-to-heads on our 12-test suite (scores shown are from our tests and Epoch AI where noted). R1 wins: strategic_analysis (R1 5 vs GPT‑4o 2) — R1 ranks tied for 1st on strategic analysis, meaning better nuanced tradeoff reasoning for pricing, policy, or product decisions; constrained_rewriting (4 vs 3) — R1 is stronger when you must compress or strictly meet character limits (R1 ranks 6th of 53); creative_problem_solving (5 vs 3) — R1 tied for 1st, useful for novel, feasible idea generation; faithfulness (5 vs 4) — R1 tied for 1st, so it sticks closer to source material; multilingual (5 vs 4) — R1 tied for 1st, so non-English parity is stronger. GPT‑4o wins classification (4 vs 2) — GPT‑4o is tied for 1st in classification across models we tested, so it routes and labels reliably in our tests. Ties (no clear winner): structured_output 4/4, tool_calling 4/4, long_context 4/4 (both have large windows — R1 64k vs GPT‑4o 128k), safety_calibration 1/1, persona_consistency 5/5, agentic_planning 4/4. External math benchmarks (Epoch AI): R1 scores 93.1% on MATH Level 5 (Epoch AI), ranking 8 of 14 in that subset; GPT‑4o scores 53.3% on MATH Level 5 and ranks 12 of 14. On AIME 2025 (Epoch AI) R1 scores 53.3% vs GPT‑4o 6.4% (R1 ranks 17/23 vs GPT‑4o 22/23). On SWE-bench Verified (Epoch AI) GPT‑4o scores 31% and ranks 12 of 12 in that subset (lowest among the 12 tested). Practically: choose R1 when you need strong math, multilingual output, faithful summarization, or creative analysis at much lower cost. Choose GPT‑4o when multimodal inputs (text+image+file), top-tier classification, or the larger 128k context window are mandatory despite higher expense.

R1 input/output: $0.7 / $2.5 per mTok. GPT‑4o input/output: $2.5 / $10 per mTok. For a balanced 50/50 split of input/output tokens: 1M tokens ≈ 500 mToks input + 500 mToks output → R1 ≈ $1,600; GPT‑4o ≈ $6,250. Scale that by 10× and 100×: 10M → R1 $16,000 vs GPT‑4o $62,500; 100M → R1 $160,000 vs GPT‑4o $625,000. R1 runs at ~25% of GPT‑4o’s cost for the same token usage (priceRatio = 0.25). If you serve high-volume customers, pipeline logs, or realtime user chat at scale, R1’s cost savings become decisive. Teams that need images/files or can absorb the premium for that capability should budget for GPT‑4o’s 3–4× higher input costs and 4× higher output costs.

Choose R1 if you need cost-efficient, high-performing text-only inference for strategic reasoning, math-heavy workloads (MATH 93.1% Epoch AI), multilingual products, faithful summarization, or creative idea generation. Choose GPT‑4o if you must accept image or file inputs (modality: text+image+file→text), need the larger 128k context window, or require the strongest classification behavior from our tests — and you can afford substantially higher costs ($2.5/$10 per mTok).