# OpenAI's Decisions API Is Live: $0.10/M Input, 10x Faster Decisions for Your AI Agents > Source: > Published: 2026-10-23 03:32:28+00:00 OpenAI shipped something yesterday that should change how you build agent control flows. The OpenAI Decisions API went generally available on October 22, 2026 — a dedicated endpoint, `POST /v1/decisions`, that returns structured judgments instead of chat text. No more asking a chat model "is this ticket urgent?" and regex-parsing the reply. You get a probability, a choice from your fixed list, or a rubric score. OpenAI prices it at $0.10 per 1M input tokens with zero output-token fees, and claims it's roughly 10x faster than the Responses API. My take after reading the launch coverage: if your agents burn thousands of calls on routing, triage, and classification, this is worth a prototype this week. But two things to know before you rewire anything — the 10x speed number is OpenAI's own claim, unmeasured by anyone independent, and the endpoint runs `gpt-6-luna` and nothing else. Most agent "decisions" today are string-parsing hacks. You ask a chat model a yes/no question, get back a paragraph, and extract the answer. It works until a model decides to be helpful and explain itself, and your router breaks at 3 AM. The Decisions API is OpenAI productizing that pattern. The output *is* the judgment, in one of three shapes: Conceptually, a call looks something like this (illustrative sketch, not the verbatim schema — check the docs for exact fields): ``` POST /v1/decisions { "question": "Route this support ticket", "type": "choice", "options": ["billing", "refunds", "escalation"], "input": { "subject": "...", "body": "..." } } // → { "decision": "refunds", "confidence": 0.91 } ``` Inputs can be text, images (as base64 data URLs, not hosted links), and — new in GA — native JSON. That last one matters: no more wrapping your structured data in prose and hoping the model parses it back out. The timeline: DevDay preview in late September, public beta on October 6, GA on October 22. GA added the pieces that make it actually usable: That last one is the sleeper feature. A nightly batch job scoring 400 tickets as urgency predicates becomes a single API call. $0.10 per 1M input tokens. $0.01 per 1M cached input. Output-token fees: none — the endpoint returns judgments, not generated text. Read that last line carefully. "No output-token fees" sounds like a discount; really the bill moved entirely onto input. That's honest for what the endpoint does, but compare against your *current* flow. If your classification hack uses 200 input tokens and 30 output tokens on a cheap model, the win here is speed and reliability, not necessarily dollars. Two fine-print items: **cache writes are billed** (warming the cache costs you; only hits get the $0.01 rate), and **regional processing premiums plus long-context multipliers still apply**. European inference isn't the headline price. OpenAI says roughly 10x faster than the Responses API — ~150ms versus 1.6s for a standard Luna call, per ai-tldr's reporting of OpenAI's figure. Nobody outside OpenAI has published measurements. The press repeated the number; nobody reproduced it. Architecturally it *should* be fast — no token-by-token generation, just a judgment head. But "should be" isn't a latency budget. If you're re-architecting latency-sensitive flows, benchmark it on your own traffic before you commit. Don't build an SLO on a press number. **Already doing classification-via-chat?** Prototype the swap on your highest-volume, lowest-stakes routing call this week. Measure latency yourself. Don't trust the 10x — verify it. **Building new agent control flows?** Design for this endpoint, but keep the model call behind an interface. Single-model lock-in is real: if `gpt-6-luna` misjudges your domain, there's no fallback on this endpoint. **High-stakes decisions?** HIPAA eligibility helps with compliance, but a probability from one model is still one model's opinion. Human-in-the-loop stays. Two more things from the launch window: Perplexity launched **Open Decider** (pplx-decider v1.1) as a direct competitor — worth watching if you want leverage or a second opinion on judgments. And OpenAI simplified its API tiers to Build/Launch/Grow in the same announcement, so check where your usage lands. The bottom line: this is the first OpenAI API that treats "decide" as a first-class operation instead of a chat trick. That's genuinely useful. Just don't let launch-week numbers do your capacity planning. *Researched from the launch coverage (webpronews, tsnmedia, pandromeda, ai-tldr) — I haven't run the endpoint myself, and where OpenAI's claims are unmeasured I've said so.*