GPT 5.5

OpenAI’s flagship model released April 2026 (codenamed “Spud”). Positioned as “more with less” — fewer output tokens per task, faster autonomous decomposition of vague prompts.

Key facts

  • Type: Foundation language model
  • Maker: OpenAI
  • Released: April 2026
  • Codename: Spud
  • Pricing: $5/M input tokens, $30/M output tokens (double GPT 5.4; marginally more expensive than Opus 4.7 on output)
  • Context window in Codex: 400K tokens (vs Opus 4.7’s 1M)
  • Availability: ChatGPT, Codex; direct API coming soon at launch
  • Codex role: One of the selectable Codex models in Nate’s May 2026 Codex app walkthrough, alongside GPT 5.4 and other model choices [src-048]
  • Reasoning controls: Codex exposes speed/intelligence settings such as low, medium, high, and extra-high reasoning in the app interface [src-048]
  • Roberts’s framing: GPT 5.5 is presented as the strongest Codex model option and paired with a speed/performance toggle that trades usage for faster execution [src-058].

Benchmark comparison vs Claude Opus 4.7 (Nate’s 4-task coding benchmark)

Metric GPT 5.5 Opus 4.7
Total runtime (4 tasks) 20m 49s 40m 43s
Output tokens ~70K ~250K
Relative cost ~$3 cheaper baseline
Terminal Bench 2.0 82.7 69.4
SWE-bench Verified lower higher

Key finding: GPT 5.5 uses ~3.5x fewer output tokens for equivalent outputs — the “more with less” positioning is measurable. [src-012]

Related

Source references

  • [src-012] Nate Herk — Video editing & content creation cluster (2026-04-15 to 2026-04-23)
  • [src-048] Nate Herk — “Master 97% of Codex in 1 Hour (full course)” (2026-05-06)
  • [src-058] Jack Roberts — “How to use Codex Better than 99% of People” (2026-05-06)