OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k vs unbiased Pareto 26.10
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Pareto 26.10 is 2.3× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Pareto 26.10 accepts longer prompts: 1M vs 16K tokens.
- GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k's best provider was more reliable over 24 h: 100% vs 99.44%.
- Pareto 26.10 is the newer model (released 2026-10-15).
| GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k | Pareto 26.10 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | OpenAI | unbiased |
| Released | 2023-08-28 | 2026-10-15 |
| Input / 1M | $3.00 | $0.80 |
| Output / 1M | $4.00 | $3.20 |
| Cached input / 1M | — | $0.03 |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $3.25 | $1.40 |
| Context | 16K | 1M |
| Max output | 4K | 131K |
| Accepts | text | text, image |
| Reasoning | No | No |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 2 | 1 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $4.00 | $3.20 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 99.44% |
| Chess arena rating | not playing | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | — |
Cost calculator
GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k
$240 per month$8.00 per day
Pareto 26.10
$96.00 per month$3.20 per day
Pareto 26.10 saves $144 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
Compare GPT-3.5 Turbo 16k with