OpenAI API Deprecation Calendar
OpenAI retires two things: model snapshots (dated versions stop serving, replaced by a newer snapshot) and whole API surfaces (Assistants, Videos, Reusable Prompts, Evals, Agent Builder, fine-tuning). The surface shutdowns are the ones that break code you cannot fix by bumping a model string - they need a rewrite, so start those early. Every row below links to OpenAI's official deprecations page; confirm your exact snapshot there before migrating.
2026
| Date | What retires | Do this before the date | Src |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 23 | Shutdown wave 1: legacy gpt-3.5-turbo, gpt-4 variants, o1, o3-mini snapshots and their fine-tunes start erroring (wave 2: Oct 23) | Grep your codebase and configs for those exact model strings; repoint to current GPT-5.x or o4-mini. Retrain or redeploy any fine-tune built on these bases - the tuned weights die with the base. | ✓ |
| Aug 10 | gpt-5.2-chat-latest, gpt-5.3-chat-latest | Move to gpt-5.5. If you pinned a -chat-latest alias for stability, note it always tracks the newest snapshot - pin a dated snapshot instead if you need reproducibility. | ✓ |
| Aug 26 | Assistants API - full shutdown (threads, runs, assistants objects) | Rewrite onto the Responses API + Conversations API. Budget real time: the object model differs (no server-side threads/runs loop), so this is a port, not a config change. Export any assistant definitions and file attachments now. | ✓ |
| Sep 24 | Videos API + sora-2/sora-2-pro - shutdown, no first-party successor | There is no drop-in OpenAI replacement. Evaluate Google Veo 3.1 or Gemini Omni Flash video now and abstract your video calls behind an interface so the swap is one adapter, not a rewrite. | ✓ |
| Sep 28 | Shutdown wave 2 of the 2025-09-26 announcement (legacy GPT snapshots) | Same drill as Jul 23: repoint pinned snapshots to current GPT-5.x. Check the deprecations page for the exact snapshot list in this wave. | ✓ |
| Oct 23 | Shutdown wave 2 of the 2026-04-22 announcement (legacy snapshots) + gpt-image-1 preview on Azure mirror | Finish the Jul 23 migration if you deferred any snapshots into wave 2. Nothing new to plan if wave 1 is done. | ✓ |
| Oct 31 | Evals platform goes read-only (full shutdown Nov 30) | Export eval definitions and historical run data before it locks. Move your eval harness to code (Agents SDK evals or your own runner) so grading is version-controlled, not platform-bound. | ✓ |
| Nov 30 | Shutdown: v1/prompts (Reusable Prompts), Evals platform, Agent Builder | Move Reusable Prompts into your own app code or a prompt file in the repo - stop depending on server-hosted prompt IDs. Rebuild Agent Builder flows on the Agents SDK. | ✓ |
| Dec 1 | gpt-image-1-mini, gpt-image-1.5, chatgpt-image-latest | Repoint image generation to gpt-image-2. Re-test prompts: image models shift style and parameter handling between versions. | ✓ |
| Dec 11 | Snapshots: gpt-5/gpt-5-mini/gpt-5-nano (2025-08-07), gpt-5-pro (2025-10-06), o3, o3-pro | These are the first-generation GPT-5 snapshots. Move to gpt-5.5, gpt-5.4-mini/nano, gpt-5.5-pro. Re-run your regression evals - behavior and pricing both shift across the jump. | ✓ |
2027 (announced so far)
| Date | What retires | Do this before the date | Src |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 6 | Fine-tuning: no new jobs accepted (final stage of the 2026-05-07 wind-down) | If your product depends on OpenAI fine-tuning, this is the hard stop for creating new tunes. Migrate the workload now: prompt engineering + few-shot, distillation to a model you control, or fine-tuning on another provider. Existing deployed tunes keep serving until their own base retires - check the model list above. | ✓ |
Not a shutdown, but it changes your bill
PRICE: GPT-5.6 makes explicit cache writes cost 1.25x the input rate. If you write to the prompt cache aggressively, your cache economics changed - re-check whether caching still nets a saving at your hit rate before assuming it does.
Waves and dates: OpenAI groups some shutdowns into waves (Jul 23 / Oct 23, and the 2025-09-26 announcement split across Sep 28). A snapshot named in an announcement may retire in either wave - verify yours on the official deprecations page. This calendar is maintenance guidance, not legal advice.