Provider Dossier · Frontier Lab
OpenAI
Frontier model quality and the de-facto API standard the whole ecosystem mimics.
The Datum Index verdict
Benchmark of the field
Ranked No. 1 of 20 in our composite reputation index, and currently holding steady.
≈ 4.6 / 5 aggregate · 1,420 reviewer notes
Composite index · reviewed 10 July 2026
Findings
- OpenAI holds a Datum Index composite reputation of 91 / 100 (≈ 4.6 / 5), ranked No. 1 of 20.
- It is a frontier lab based in San Francisco, USA, founded 2015, offering proprietary model access.
- Its flagship offering is GPT-4o / o-series, exposed through an OpenAI-compatible API.
- Indicative pricing is $2.50 / 1M tokens in / $10.00 / 1M tokens out (medium confidence).
- Reference throughput is ~130 tok/s with ~850 ms time-to-first-token; stated uptime is 99.8%.
OpenAI enters our index at No. 1, a placement that reads as benchmark of the field. The composite rests on 1,420 reviewer notes gathered across the public record, and it is best understood not as a score out of ten but as a standing among peers. The trend line is flat: reviewer sentiment has held steady over recent quarters.
In its favour
Frontier model quality and the de-facto API standard the whole ecosystem mimics.
On the numbers that flatter it: proprietary access, 3 named compliance attestations, and a reference throughput of ~130 tokens per second.
Points of concern
Premium pricing and no access to open-weight models.
The caveat a buyer should price in before committing production traffic. As with every entry, we weigh it against the field rather than against perfection.
Incident & Uptime Note
The record of being there
OpenAI states an availability of 99.8%. Held over a full year, that headline implies on the order of 17.5 hours of cumulative unavailability — a useful sense of scale, though real incidents cluster rather than spread evenly, and a single bad afternoon can outweigh a quiet quarter.
Observatory Panel
Latency & throughput, in distribution
Monthly panels across the models OpenAI serves medium
GPT-4o
| Window | TTFT ms — mean · p50 · p90 | Throughput tok/s — mean · p50 · p90 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | ~980 | ~910 | ~1970 | ~118 | ~121 | ~140 |
| June 2026 | ~970 | ~870 | ~1540 | ~119 | ~127 | ~141 |
| July 2026 | ~980 | ~880 | ~1660 | ~122 | ~126 | ~150 |
GPT-4.1
| Window | TTFT ms — mean · p50 · p90 | Throughput tok/s — mean · p50 · p90 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | ~1310 | ~1130 | ~2290 | ~95 | ~98 | ~116 |
| June 2026 | ~1230 | ~1080 | ~1840 | ~96 | ~103 | ~119 |
| July 2026 | ~1260 | ~1080 | ~2140 | ~97 | ~103 | ~115 |
o4-mini
| Window | TTFT ms — mean · p50 · p90 | Throughput tok/s — mean · p50 · p90 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2026 | ~1180 | ~1070 | ~2170 | ~147 | ~153 | ~171 |
| June 2026 | ~1110 | ~1030 | ~1680 | ~148 | ~159 | ~188 |
| July 2026 | ~1120 | ~1020 | ~1690 | ~155 | ~159 | ~183 |
All figures are single-stream, per-request rates as one user would see them — never aggregate accelerator throughput. Serving modes are not comparable with one another: shared serverless APIs batch many tenants per accelerator, dedicated and self-served deployments hand one tenant the whole card, and specialist silicon is a regime of its own. Read each figure within its mode.
No field returns on record for OpenAI yet — the ledger above opens as soon as the first practitioner submission clears verification.
Key Facts
The record, in brief
| Category | Frontier Lab |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Francisco, USA |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Model access | Proprietary |
| Flagship / reference | GPT-4o / o-series |
| OpenAI-compatible API | Yes |
| Indicative price (in / out) | $2.50 / 1M tokens / $10.00 / 1M tokens medium |
| Reference throughput | ~130 tok/s |
| Reference TTFT | ~850 ms |
| Stated uptime | 99.8% |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II · GDPR · CCPA |
| Composite reputation | 91 / 100 · ≈ 4.6 / 5 · 1,420 notes |
Reviewer Notes
What the field says
The 1,420 notes behind OpenAI's standing are drawn from the accumulated public verdict of practitioners — the recurring praises and the recurring gripes — rather than from any single survey. Two themes dominate. Admirers return to one point above all: Frontier model quality and the de-facto API standard the whole ecosystem mimics. Detractors return to another: Premium pricing and no access to open-weight models.
We publish neither individual reviews nor reviewer identities; the composite is an editorial synthesis, and the reviewer-note count is an order-of-magnitude indication of how much public signal informs it.
Related dossiers · see also
Peer entries in the same or adjacent category, for comparison against OpenAI's standing.