Last updated: April 5, 2026 · Prompting & Usage · by Daniel Ashford
What is Temperature?
A setting that controls how creative or deterministic responses are.
Definition
Temperature controls the randomness of output. Lower temperatures (0.0-0.3) make the model more deterministic. Higher temperatures (0.7-1.0+) increase randomness and creativity.
How It Works
At temperature 0, the model always picks the most likely token — ideal for factual tasks and code. At temperature 1.0, it samples from the full distribution — better for creative writing and brainstorming. Most APIs default to 0.7.
Example
Asking "What is the capital of France?" at temperature 0 always produces "Paris." At temperature 1.5, it might produce creative tangents.
Related Terms
See How Models Compare
Understanding temperature is important when choosing the right AI model. See how 12 models compare on our leaderboard.