GPT-6 Sol costs $2/1M input and $10/1M output tokens, and GPT-6 Luna costs $0.10/1M input and $0.50/1M output tokens, both about 50% cheaper than GPT-5.6

OpenAI is releasing a more budget-friendly version of its most powerful model. — On Tuesday, the company unveiled GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna …

The Deep View 2026-09-22 Nat Rubio-Licht

Context & Ripple Effects

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 pricing began at $5/$30 per million input/output tokens for Sol in July, before the company temporarily cut Sol's API rates to $4/$20 in August. It also attributed July reductions for Luna and Terra to serving-system efficiency, establishing cost reduction as an operating lever rather than a one-off promotion.

The GPT-6 release extends that trajectory across performance tiers: separate coverage says Sol reduces mistakes versus GPT-5.6 Sol while Luna reaches its performance level at a far lower price. The significance is therefore not simply a cheaper API, but a lower price point attached to capability previously sold in a higher tier.

First-order effects

OpenAI API customers can buy GPT-6 Sol at $2/$10 per million input/output tokens and GPT-6 Luna at $0.10/$0.50, lowering billed inference costs relative to the GPT-5.6 lineup.
OpenAI shifts the value proposition for GPT-5.6 users: Sol pairs lower token rates with the company’s claimed accuracy improvement, while Luna is positioned as the low-cost alternative to prior Sol-level performance.

Second-order effects

Application builders using GPT-6 face a lower cost per completed task when lower token prices combine with fewer retries or errors, making model selection less dependent on the older GPT-5.6 price ladder.
OpenAI’s own tiers become more tightly segmented: Luna targets price-sensitive volume workloads while Sol supplies a higher-capability option at rates below GPT-5.6 Sol's earlier list price.

Third-order effects

If successive capability releases continue to arrive at lower token rates, inference pricing will increasingly be judged by cost per useful task rather than by a model’s nominal per-token price.
The July serving-efficiency cuts and the GPT-6 price reset point to a market in which model providers use systems efficiency and tiering to pass lower inference costs into API competition.

The trend: Frontier-model vendors are compressing inference prices while moving stronger performance into lower-cost tiers, shifting AI buying toward effective cost per useful task.

Discussion

r/OpenaiCodex r on reddit
Introducing GPT-6 Sol and Luna
Julien Simiand Julien Simiand on linkedin
I've been telling my customers that prices keep coming down, release after release, while we keep pushing to get more useful work out of every token. …
@levie Aaron Levie on x
What an insane day in AI. The frontier models just became substantially cheaper, with the Opus 5.5 price cuts, and now with GPT-6 Sol and Luna dropping token prices by 50%. The rate at which the cost per task (on a like-for-like basis) drops in AI is unlike any other type of tech…
@synthwavedd Leo on x
It seems OpenAI are making up for 6 Sol likely not being as good as Opus 5.5 through its pricing. Still waiting for benchmarks to drop, but... GPT-6 Sol is 50% of the price of 5.6 Sol. $2 in per million tokens, $10 out. 🤑
@sama Sam Altman on x
We want the OpenAI API to feature the best model at every price point and to be the best at every modality (text, code, image, video, etc). And then we want you all to come up with great ideas and build them and to get to be happy users. The best ideas will come from you all.
@sama Sam Altman on x
Especially compared by per-task pricing, which is the metric that should matter, I don't think there is anything competitive anywhere in the market. We want people to be able to use tons of AI; it is important to being able to explore this new renaissance in front of us.
@polynoamial Noam Brown on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna are out, and they are better AND 50% cheaper than 5.6. Luna is now $0.10 input / $0.50 output per 1M tokens. This is on top of the 80% price cut to Luna we made at the end of July. Output went from $6 -> $0.50 within two months.
@reach_vb @reach_vb on x
We are loading a BANKED RESET into all accounts of our Plus, Pro and Business users!!
@sama Sam Altman on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna are great models but also these characters are so cute
@thsottiaux Tibo on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna are out. Not only are they a very significant improvement across the board, but also in writing and general “you know when you try it
@scaling01 @scaling01 on x
lmao what is this? now we know why they are so cheap
@artificialanlys @artificialanlys on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna push the cost efficiency frontier by halving cost relative to GPT-5.6 Sol and Luna. Intelligence Index and Coding Agent Index scores remain level with GPT-5.6, with progress in some evaluations and regressions in others Pricing is approximately half that of GPT…
@ricmac Richard MacManus on x
Isn't competition great!! Who was that VC who said monopolies are best? (Thiel). Certainly not for us users.
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
Benchmarks GPT-6 Sol & Luna: • FrontierCode: 48.4% vs. Fable 5.1's 48.7%, both at xhigh. $1.37 vs. $9.27 per task, roughly 85% cheaper. • DeepSWE: 68.8% at max vs. Fable 5's best result of 69.9% at xhigh. $2.74 vs. $13.41 per task, roughly 80% cheaper. • AutomationBench: 33.2% at…
@openaidevs @openaidevs on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna just landed in Astra's orbit. Both launch today with API prices 50% lower than GPT-5.6. Build with Sol. Scale with Luna. To production and beyond.
@reach_vb @reach_vb on x
Introducing GPT-6 Sol and Luna, bringing the advances behind Astra to faster, more affordable models. ✨ 💻 Stronger coding and computer use 🎯 Improved factuality and alignment 💬 Clearer answers with less jargon > On AutomationBench, Sol at xhigh effort outperforms Claude Opus 5 at…
@openai @openai on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna build on Astra's advances in alignment, showing improvements over their GPT-5.6 counterparts.
@openai @openai on x
Please welcome GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna to the GPT-6 universe. GPT-6 Sol and Luna build on the advances behind GPT-6 Astra, bringing much of its strengths into faster and more affordable models to support work at scale. We've also made caching and inference more efficient, and we…
@cheatyyyy @cheatyyyy on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna benchmarks from the official blogpost!
@dandr1s Dan on x
🚨 GPT-6 Sol is HALF the price of GPT-5.6 Sol. Standard API pricing per 1M tokens (input / output): Sol: $4 / $20 → $2 / $10 Luna: $0.20 / $1.20 → $0.10 / $0.50 That's 50% cheaper input and nearly 60% cheaper output for Luna.
@cheatyyyy @cheatyyyy on x
GPT-6 Luna and Sol live on the API! GPT-6 Luna: Input: $0.10 / MTok Output: $0.50 / MTok Cache Write: $0.125 / MTok Cache Read: $0.01 / MTok GPT-6 Sol: Input: $2.00 / MTok Output: $10.00 / MTok Cache Write: $2.50 / MTok Cache Read: $0.20 / MTok
@angaisb_ Angel on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna API pricing is out They're so cheap! - Sol: $2 input / $10 output, down from $4 / $20 for 5.6 Sol - Luna: $0.10 input / $0.50 output, down from $0.20 / $1.20 for 5.6 Luna Per 1M tokens, short context, excluding 5.6 Sol's promotional pricing
@scaling01 @scaling01 on x
GPT-6 Sol and Luna are dirt cheap GPT-6 Sol is half the price of Opus 5.5
@andrewcurran_ Andrew Curran on x
It's a double release day just like old times! GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna are rolling out, for some of my mutuals they are already live. OpenAI announcement incoming.
@kimmonismus @kimmonismus on x
Here we go: next big launch incoming! Sol and Luna rolling out. I'll post the benchmarks as soon as I get access to them! Check your codex friends!
@imsh4yy Shayan on x
Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Haiku. Astra, Sol, Terra (RIP), Luna. This is the most straightforward it's ever been.

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