OpenAI vs Scaleway: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence
Full comparison of OpenAI and Scaleway — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.
OpenAI
GPT-4o, o3, and the world's most widely-used AI API
OpenAI is the creator of the GPT model family and the ChatGPT product. Their API provides access to frontier models including GPT-4o, the o-series reasoning models, and the GPT-4.1 long-context family. Pricing is competitive for frontier-tier capability, with prompt caching available on most models.
Scaleway
French cloud provider with sovereign EU LLM inference
Scaleway is a French cloud provider offering GPU compute and LLM inference with a focus on European data sovereignty. Their Generative APIs service hosts Llama 3.3 and other open-weight models, making them a strong choice for European businesses with data residency requirements.
Key metrics
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Live token pricing
Strengths & weaknesses
OpenAI
Scaleway
Key differentiators
Frequently asked questions
OpenAI FAQs
How much does the OpenAI API cost?
GPT-4o costs $2.50/1M input tokens and $10/1M output tokens. GPT-4o-mini is $0.15/$0.60 per 1M tokens. Prompt caching cuts input costs by 50% on eligible requests.
What is the difference between GPT-4o and o3?
GPT-4o is a fast, multimodal model optimised for chat, vision, and coding. o3 is a reasoning model that uses chain-of-thought to solve complex problems — it is slower and more expensive but significantly more capable on math, science, and hard coding tasks.
Does OpenAI support prompt caching?
Yes. Prompt caching is available on GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, o3, and o4-mini. Cached input tokens are billed at 50% of the standard input price, making long-context and repeated-system-prompt workloads significantly cheaper.
Scaleway FAQs
Is Scaleway GDPR-compliant?
Yes. Scaleway is a French company with data centres in France and the Netherlands. All data stays within the EU, making it one of the strongest options for GDPR compliance and French data sovereignty requirements.
What LLM models does Scaleway offer?
Scaleway's Generative APIs service hosts Llama 3.3 and other open-weight models. Their catalog is focused on the most widely-used open-source models.
How does Scaleway compare to Nebius AI for European inference?
Both are European providers with GDPR-compliant infrastructure. Scaleway has stronger French data sovereignty credentials (French company, French data centres) while Nebius AI has a larger model catalog and more inference-focused infrastructure.
Provider resources
OpenAI — GPT-4o, o3, and the world's most widely-used AI API
OpenAI is the creator of the GPT model family and the ChatGPT product. Their API provides access to frontier models including GPT-4o, the o-series reasoning models, and the GPT-4.1 long-context family. Pricing is competitive for frontier-tier capability, with prompt caching available on most models.
The most widely-integrated LLM API — virtually every AI framework and tool supports OpenAI natively.
Scaleway — French cloud provider with sovereign EU LLM inference
Scaleway is a French cloud provider offering GPU compute and LLM inference with a focus on European data sovereignty. Their Generative APIs service hosts Llama 3.3 and other open-weight models, making them a strong choice for European businesses with data residency requirements.
The strongest European data sovereignty credentials — a French company with French data centres, ideal for organisations with strict EU data residency requirements.
Key strengths compared
OpenAI
- ▸Largest ecosystem & third-party integrations
- ▸Best-in-class function calling & structured outputs
- ▸Prompt caching on all major models
Scaleway
- ▸French cloud — strongest EU data sovereignty credentials
- ▸GDPR-compliant with data centres in France and Netherlands
- ▸GPU compute + LLM inference from one provider
Provider category context
OpenAI is a frontier lab, founded in 2015. Scaleway is a cloud, founded in 1999. The category difference means these providers serve partially overlapping use cases — compare the model lists and pricing tables above to find the best fit for your specific workload.
How to choose between them
Choose OpenAI if you need largest ecosystem & third-party integrations. Choose Scaleway if you need french cloud — strongest eu data sovereignty credentials. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.