OpenAI retires whisper-1 on 26 February 2027. The replacement is 25% cheaper, unless you were on the $0.003 model, and three jobs have no successor yet

Horizontal bar chart titled: whisper-1 retires 26 Feb 2027: -25% for most, +50% for mini users. Four bars show per-minute transcription prices on OpenAI pricing page: gpt-4o-mini-transcribe $0.003 a minute (removed 26 Feb 2027), gpt-transcribe $0.0045 a minute (stays, recommended, blue bar), whisper-1 and gpt-4o-transcribe $0.006 a minute (removed 26 Feb 2027), gpt-live-transcribe $0.017 a minute (stays, live audio only). A red arrow from the mini bar to gpt-transcribe is labelled mini users: +50%; a grey arrow from the whisper-1 bar to gpt-transcribe is labelled whisper-1 users: -25%. Footer: prices read from OpenAI pricing page (All models expanded) and deprecations page on 11 September 2026. stackvaluelab.com

OpenAI removes whisper-1, gpt-4o-transcribe, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize from the API on 26 February 2027. The recommended gpt-transcribe is $0.0045 a minute: 25% less than whisper-1, 50% more than the mini model. Word timestamps, translation into English and speaker labels have no named successor in the guide yet. Every figure read from OpenAI’s own pages on 11 September 2026.