Last refreshed 2026-04-27. Next refresh: weekly.
Why use babbage on Azure OpenAI?
Azure OpenAI offers babbage with pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.40/1M input tokens. Azure OpenAI Service hosts OpenAI's GPT-4o, GPT-4, GPT-3.5, and embedding models on Microsoft Azure with enterprise SLAs.
Setup recipe
Python + curlpip install openaiexport AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=...import os
from openai import AzureOpenAI
client = AzureOpenAI(
azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"], # e.g. https://{resource}.openai.azure.combabbageRequest example
import os
from openai import AzureOpenAI
client = AzureOpenAI(
azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"], # e.g. https://{resource}.openai.azure.com
api_key=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"],
api_version="2024-02-01"
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="babbage", # your deployment name
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)Gotchas
- babbage is your Azure deployment name, not the underlying model name. Deployment names are set when you deploy a model in Azure AI Foundry / Azure OpenAI Studio.
- The examples expect AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY; rename it only if your application config maps the new variable.
Pricing
| Type | Price (per 1M) |
|---|---|
| Input tokens | $0.40 |
| Output tokens | $0.40 |
Capabilities
No model capability flags are currently sourced.
About babbage
The Babbage model is a large language AI model within the GPT-3 family, recognized for its speed and cost-effectiveness 569. Although it is not as capable as the Davinci model, it outperforms the Ada model in various capabilities 129. Ideal for simpler classification tasks and semantic searches, Babbage efficiently ranks document relevance to search queries 129. With an estimated 1.3 billion parameters 9, it requires less computational power compared to other models like Davinci, which has 175 billion parameters 9. Nonetheless, its role has been surpassed by more advanced models, such as GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4, known for their superior capabilities and efficiency 2.
FAQ
What does babbage cost on Azure OpenAI?
On Azure OpenAI, babbage costs $0.40 per 1M input tokens and $0.40 per 1M output tokens.
What is the context window for babbage on Azure OpenAI?
babbage supports a 2,000 token context window on Azure OpenAI.
Who created babbage?
babbage was created by OpenAI as part of the GPT-3 model family.
Is babbage open source?
babbage's open source status is unknown in the seed data.