GPT-5.5
OpenAI's April 2026 frontier model for agentic coding, research, and multi-step tool use with vision and reasoning.
Overview
What is GPT-5.5
GPT-5.5 is OpenAI's frontier large language model released in April 2026, designed for complex agentic work including coding, research, and tool use. It supports vision, reasoning, web search, and function calling, and is positioned as the most capable and intuitive model in the GPT-5 series.
Running it privately on Venice
On Venice, GPT-5.5 runs under an anonymized privacy tier — your prompts are not stored, profiled, or used for training. You get the full frontier model with vision, reasoning, web search, and tool use, without Big-Tech surveillance or subscription lock-in. Note that this deployment is not end-to-end encrypted or TEE-isolated.
Assessment
Strengths and limitations
- OpenAI's most capable generalist model, excelling at agentic coding, computer use, online research, and data analysis across tools.
- Supports vision, reasoning, web search, function calling, structured JSON output, and multiple image inputs for complex multi-modal workflows.
- Matches GPT-5.4 per-token latency while delivering higher intelligence and improved token efficiency on coding tasks.
- Massive 1,000K context window and 131,072 max output tokens for long-document and large-codebase work.
- Closed and proprietary: no open weights, so you cannot self-host, audit, or fine-tune the model.
- Not uncensored: OpenAI applies its strongest safeguards to date, which means more refusals on sensitive, harmful, or controversial requests.
- Expensive output pricing at $37.50 per 1M tokens, well above open-weights rivals and many proprietary competitors.
- Privacy on Venice is anonymized, not end-to-end encrypted or TEE-isolated, so you trust Venice's inference layer.
Capabilities
What it supports
- Tool use / function calling
- Vision (image input)
- Reasoning
- Web search
- Code-optimized
- Structured output (JSON schema)
- Audio input
- Video input
- Multiple image inputs
- Log probabilities
Specifications
Datasheet
- Maker
- OpenAI
- Released
- April 23, 2026
- Architecture
- Not disclosed
- Parameters
- Not disclosed
- Open weights
- No — proprietary
- Context window
- 1,000K tokens
- Max output
- 131.072K tokens
- Capabilities
- Vision, Function calling, Reasoning, Web search
- Privacy on Venice
- Anonymized — prompts not stored
- Available on Venice since
- Apr 2026
API
Call it from your code
Venice exposes an OpenAI-compatible API. Point your base URL at Venice and pass the model id.
curl https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $VENICE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "openai-gpt-55",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Explain quantum tunneling simply." }]
}'Pricing
What it costs on Venice
Billed per token on Venice: $6.25 per 1M input tokens and $37.50 per 1M output tokens.
New Venice accounts include a free daily allowance and 500 welcome credits — no credit card required.
Alternatives
How it compares
| Model | Best for | Context window | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Open weights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | OpenAI's frontier generalist with vision, reasoning, and tool use. | 1M tokens | $6.25 in · $37.50 out / 1M | $37.50 | No |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Anthropic's top-tier rival; similar scale and pricing with strong long-horizon reasoning. | 1M tokens | $6 in · $30 out / 1M | $30.00 | No |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | Open-weights challenger at a fraction of the cost, trading context length for sovereignty. | 160K tokens | $0.33 in · $0.48 out / 1M | $0.48 | Yes |
| Kimi K2.6 | Open-weights alternative with strong long-context performance and much lower per-token pricing. | 256K tokens | $0.75 in · $3.50 out / 1M | $3.50 | Yes |
OpenAI's frontier generalist with vision, reasoning, and tool use.
Use cases
What it is good for
- 01Agentic software engineering — writing, debugging, and shipping code across multiple files and tools.
- 02Deep research and synthesis — combining web search, document analysis, and reasoning over long contexts.
- 03Data analysis and spreadsheet/document generation from raw inputs.
- 04Multi-modal workflows — analyzing images, charts, or screenshots as part of reasoning chains.
- 05Complex task automation — using function calling and structured output to orchestrate external tools.
Prompting
Getting better results
Give messy, multi-part tasks and let the model plan and check its own work rather than micromanaging each step.
Use the vision capability to include screenshots, diagrams, or charts in prompts for richer analysis.
Leverage the large context window by passing full codebases or long documents instead of chunking.
For agentic workflows, define clear function schemas and let GPT-5.5 decide when to call tools.
Version history
Current release.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
GPT-5.5 is OpenAI's frontier large language model released in April 2026. It supports vision, reasoning, web search, and function calling, and is designed for complex agentic work like coding, research, and multi-step task automation.
Venice bills per token at $6.25 per 1M input tokens and $37.50 per 1M output tokens, with cached input at $0.63 per 1M. There is no subscription required; you pay as you go with credits.
No. GPT-5.5 is a proprietary closed model; its weights are not available for download or self-hosting. Open-source alternatives on Venice include DeepSeek V3.2 and Kimi K2.6.
GPT-5.5 leads on agentic coding, vision, and tool orchestration, while Claude Opus 4.8 is often preferred for long-horizon reasoning and nuanced writing. Choose GPT-5.5 if you need web search and multi-modal inputs; choose Opus if you want slightly lower output pricing and a different safety posture.
Yes. On Venice, GPT-5.5 supports function calling, vision (including multiple image inputs), reasoning, web search, and structured JSON output.
No. GPT-5.5 ships with OpenAI's strongest safeguards to date, meaning it will refuse or hedge on sensitive, harmful, or controversial requests. For a more permissionless experience, consider an open-weights model hosted on Venice.
Venice runs GPT-5.5 under an anonymized privacy tier — your prompts are not stored, profiled, or used for training. However, it does not run inside a TEE or use end-to-end encryption, so you rely on Venice's infrastructure privacy guarantees.
GPT-5.5 supports up to 1,000,000 tokens of context and can generate up to 131,072 tokens in a single response.
Run GPT-5.5 privately
No prompt logging. No data used for training.