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OpenAINotable

GPT-Realtime-2.1

Released Jul 6, 2026

OpenAI's current Realtime API speech-to-speech reasoning model, with configurable reasoning effort and tool use. It updates GPT-Realtime-2 with better alphanumeric recognition, silence and noise handling, and interruption behavior.

Price per minute
—
Pricing
Per 1M tokens: text $4 in / $0.40 cached / $24 out; audio $32 in / $0.40 cached / $64 out; image $5 in / $0.50 cached.
Inputs
audio, text, image
Tool calling
Yes
Languages
—
Voices
10
Big Bench Audio
95.8%
Access
Generally available
Licence
Proprietary
Strengths & weaknesses

Strengths

  • Configurable reasoning effort in a single speech-to-speech model
  • Function calling and prompt caching on the Realtime API (WebRTC, WebSocket, SIP)
  • Accepts image input alongside audio and text
  • 128K context, 32K max output

Weaknesses

  • Audio at $32 in / $64 out per 1M tokens, far above per-minute rivals
  • Big Bench Audio drops from 95.8% at high effort to 86.8% at minimal (AA)

Notable: frontier-lab clause (also #8 on AA Speech to Speech Index, 75.2 at High). AA Big Bench Audio: 95.8% (High), 86.8% (Minimal). OpenAI's deprecations page names gpt-realtime-2.1 as the replacement for gpt-realtime and gpt-4o-realtime (shutdown 2027-01-20). Knowledge cutoff 2024-09-30. Voices: 10 built-in Realtime voices (alloy, ash, ballad, coral, echo, sage, shimmer, verse, marin, cedar) per the Realtime conversations guide, and custom voices are available to eligible customers. No language count is published.

Links

API model strings

  • openaigpt-realtime-2.1