Azure OpenAI v1 API: Ditch the Monthly Churn, Embrace OpenAI Client Parity

TL;DR: Starting in August 2025, Azure OpenAI released a next-generation v1 API that provides ongoing access to the latest features without needing to specify new api-versions each month. This eliminates the painful versioning treadmill and lets you use the standard OpenAI Python/Node client with minimal code changes. If you’re shipping on Azure, this is the upgrade your CI/CD pipeline has been begging for.

The Problem You’ve Been Living With

Before August 2025, Azure OpenAI was a versioning nightmare. Azure OpenAI received monthly updates of new API versions, and taking advantage of new features required constantly updating code and environment variables with each new API release. Every time OpenAI shipped something shiny, your team had to:

Update your code to reference the new api-version parameter
Bump environment variables across dev, staging, and prod
Redeploy and test
Repeat next month Azure OpenAI also required the extra step of using Azure-specific clients, which created overhead when migrating code between OpenAI and Azure OpenAI. That friction meant your Azure deployments drifted from your local OpenAI development setup—a recipe for surprises in production.

What Changed: The v1 API

The next-generation v1 APIs add support for ongoing access to the latest features with no need to specify new api-versions each month, plus a faster API release cycle with new features launching more frequently. The real magic: OpenAI client support with minimal code changes to swap between OpenAI and Azure OpenAI when using key-based authentication. No more AzureOpenAI() client—you can use the standard OpenAI() client.

How to Migrate (It’s Simpler Than You Think)

Here’s the before-and-after:

Old way (pre-August 2025):

from azure.openai import AzureOpenAI

client = AzureOpenAI(
    api_key=os.getenv("AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"),
    api_version="2024-12-01",  # Update this every month
    azure_endpoint=os.getenv("AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT")
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)

New way (v1 GA API): Use the OpenAI() client instead of AzureOpenAI(). The base_url passes the Azure OpenAI endpoint with /openai/v1 appended to the endpoint address, and api-version is no longer a required parameter with the v1 GA API.

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.getenv("AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"),
    base_url="https://YOUR-RESOURCE-NAME.openai.azure.com/openai/v1/"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4.1-nano",  # No api_version needed
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
)

That’s it. No more api_version parameter. No more Azure-specific client. Your code now looks identical to a vanilla OpenAI setup, which means:

Easier local development: Test against OpenAI’s API locally, deploy to Azure without refactoring
Simpler migrations: Moving between OpenAI and Azure becomes a config change, not a code rewrite
Less maintenance: One fewer thing to version-bump every release cycle

Token Refresh: A Bonus Win

Automatic token refresh was previously handled through use of the AzureOpenAI() client. The v1 API removes this dependency by adding automatic token refresh support to the OpenAI() client. If you’re using Azure’s managed identity or service principal auth, you no longer need a separate Azure-specific client just to handle token lifecycle.

What’s Still in Preview

For the initial v1 Generally Available (GA) API launch, only a subset of the inference and authoring API capabilities are supported. All GA features are supported for use in production, and more capabilities are coming soon. Check the Azure OpenAI API lifecycle docs to see which endpoints are ready for your use case.

The Bottom Line

If you’re shipping .NET or Python services on Azure and consuming OpenAI models, the v1 API removes a major source of friction. You get feature parity with OpenAI’s public API, you skip the monthly versioning treadmill, and your code becomes more portable. That’s a rare win in the cloud platform game—take it.