{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
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  "path": "/t/web-search-tool-with-gpt-4o-mini/1383113#post_2",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-09T07:07:32.000Z",
  "site": "https://community.openai.com",
  "tags": [
    "Web search | OpenAI API",
    "Pricing | OpenAI API"
  ],
  "textContent": "Yes — for `gpt-4o-mini` this is expected, not necessarily a bug. The pricing docs explicitly say: “For `gpt-4o-mini` and `gpt-4.1-mini` with the non-preview web search tool, search content tokens are billed as a fixed block of 8,000 input tokens per call.” That explains why you keep seeing ~`8174` input tokens: ~8,000 fixed “search content” tokens plus your actual prompt/tool overhead. `search_context_size` controls how much search result context is made available to the model, but the Web Search guide says it “does not set an exact token count,” and for these mini models the billing block is fixed anyway. Docs: Web Search guide: Web search | OpenAI API and Pricing / built-in tools: Pricing | OpenAI API .\n\nCost-wise, the standard Responses API `web_search` tool is priced at **$10 / 1k calls** — i.e. **$0.01 per search call** — **plus** search content tokens billed at the selected model’s input-token rate. So the tool fee does not replace model input billing; the retrieved search context is also counted as model input. For `gpt-4o-mini`/`gpt-4.1-mini` on non-preview `web_search`, that search-context part is billed as a one-time fixed **8,000 input-token block per call** , even if the actual retrieved context is smaller or `search_context_size` is `low`. By contrast, the docs list `web_search_preview` for non-reasoning models as **$25 / 1k calls** with “search content tokens are free,” which is a different/legacy pricing path.\n\n* * *\n\nYour buddy and mine - the documentation AI helper - _j",
  "title": "Web search tool with gpt-4o-mini"
}