GPT 5.1 vs GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)

GPT 5.1 vs GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11): GPT 5.1 is cheaper by 29% on average. GPT 5.1 from Azure OpenAI (272,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls) vs. GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11) from Azure OpenAI (272,000-token context, reasoning, tool calls). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.

Side-by-side cost

Live workload comparison

Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.

3,000
0272,000
400
0128,000
5,000
01,000,000
GPT 5.1Cheaper
Azure OpenAI
$1,179/mo
Input $1.25/M · Output $10.00/M
Azure OpenAI
$1,651/mo
Input $1.75/M · Output $14.00/M
At this workload, GPT 5.1 is 29% cheaper than GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11) — a savings of $472/month ($5,661/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: gpt-5-1
  provider: azure-openai
fallback:
  model: gpt-5-2-2025-12-11
  provider: azure-openai
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
GPT 5.1 GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
Input price $1.25/M $1.75/M
Output price $10.00/M $14.00/M
Context window 272,000 272,000
Max output 128,000 128,000
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~29% cheaper than GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
Larger context
272,000 tokens
More capabilities
5 of 6 capability flags advertised

Benchmark comparison

Side-by-side public benchmark scores. Greener bar = winner.

Chatbot Arena ELOgeneral
GPT 5.1
1,455
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
1,477
AIME 2025math
GPT 5.1
94.0%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
GPQA Diamondreasoning
GPT 5.1
88.1%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
MMMUmultimodal
GPT 5.1
85.4%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
τ-bench (retail)agent
GPT 5.1
77.9%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
SWE-bench Verifiedagent
GPT 5.1
76.3%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
τ-bench (airline)agent
GPT 5.1
67.0%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)
FrontierMathmath
GPT 5.1
26.7%
GPT 5.2 (2025-12-11)