OpenAI Launches GPT-6.1 Sol: Near-Astra Intelligence at One-Fifth the Price

On September 30, OpenAI officially released GPT-6.1 Sol, a model built around cost efficiency: the company says it delivers performance close to GPT-6 Astra on complex work at roughly one-fifth the price, making it the most cost-efficient model available today at this performance level. It is now available to all paid users—Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu—in ChatGPT Work and Codex. It's another case of flagship-level capability quickly trickling down to cheaper tiers, reflecting the fierce pace of the AI model pricing war.

Confirmed

• OpenAI officially announced GPT-6.1 Sol, positioned as "near-Astra performance on complex work at lower cost," suited to repetitive, complex tasks across code, apps, and documents (m1, m2, m4).
• Priced at about one-fifth of GPT-6 Astra; OpenAI calls it the most cost-efficient model at this performance level (m1).
• Available immediately to all paid users (Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, Edu) of ChatGPT Work and Codex (m3).
• OpenAI says the model improved over the previous-generation GPT-6 in alignment evaluations (m3).
• An Ultrafast version of GPT-6.1 Sol was announced alongside it (m7).

Unconfirmed

• Its performance versus Anthropic Opus 5.5 on coding and other tasks remains unknown; community members like @rudrank are curious, but no benchmark data has surfaced yet (m6).

Why it matters

• Near-flagship intelligence at one-fifth the price signals that "near-flagship" capability is rapidly becoming democratized. @danshipper joked about how fast the AI pricing war moves: flagship capabilities are soon covered by cheaper versions (m5).
• Commenters like @iScienceLuvr find the value proposition notable and believe it could reshape cost structures in model selection for developers and enterprises (m8).

2026-09-30 ~ 2026-09-30 · 27 related posts

Full story(14 episodes)→

• Episode 1: OpenAI Launches GPT-6 Sol and Luna at Half Price; Big Hallucination Gains but Not a Clean Sweep(2026-09-23, 92 posts)
• Episode 2: GPT-6 Sol/Luna launch splits opinion: half-price but dumber?(2026-09-23, 9 posts)
• Episode 3: LMArena Opens GPT-6 Sol and Luna for Public Testing(2026-09-23, 2 posts)
• Episode 4: Four New Models Reshape the Cost-Performance Frontier, Opus 5.5 Tops Intelligence Index(2026-09-23, 2 posts)
• Episode 5: OpenAI and Anthropic Slash Prices Within 90 Minutes, Kicking Off a New Model Price War(2026-09-23, 7 posts)
• Episode 6: Tests Show GPT-6 Sol Scales Nearly Linearly With Effort(2026-09-23, 3 posts)
• Episode 7: GPT-6 Astra Tops Bug Hunt Bench While Sol Version Regresses(2026-09-24, 2 posts)
• Episode 8: Leaks Map GPT-6 Codenames to GPT-5.6 Versions(2026-09-24, 3 posts)
• Episode 9: Bug Hunt Bench Ranks Frontier Coding Models on 105 Real Bugs with 200x Cost Gap(2026-09-24, 3 posts)
• Episode 10: GPT-6 Sol and Luna Launch With Aggressive API Pricing(2026-09-25, 2 posts)
• Episode 11: OpenAI's efficient GPT-6 models seen as freeing compute for bigger frontier models(2026-09-25, 2 posts)
• Episode 12: GPT-6 Sol Underestimated: 1.6x Robot Task Gains at 47% Lower Cost(2026-09-25, 2 posts)
• Episode 13: OpenAI Launches GPT-6.1 Sol: Near-Astra Intelligence at One-Fifth the Price(2026-09-30, 27 posts)
• Episode 14: GPT-6.1 Sol Matches Astra at One-Fifth the Cost, API Up to 6x Faster(2026-09-30, 3 posts)

• OpenAI rolls out GPT-6.1 Sol in Codex and ChatGPT Work: near-Astra performance, lower cost — testingcatalog · 2026-09-30
• OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Sol with near-Astra performance at lower cost — acoolrandomusername · 2026-09-30
• Early users hail GPT-6.1-Sol as 'insanely efficient' at computer use — adonis_singh · 2026-09-30
• OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Sol at one-fifth of Astra's price, cached input down 95% — BitterAd6419 · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol is now live in the ChatGPT app — mallow610 · 2026-09-30
• "GPT Sol 6.1: Astra-level intelligence at 1/5 the price" — community reacts to pricing pace — danshipper · 2026-09-30
• GPT 6.1 Sol is out — how will it stack up against Opus 5.5? — rudrank · 2026-09-30
• Claim: GPT-6.1 Sol Is 5x Cheaper Than Astra with Nearly Equal Performance — cneuralnetwork · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol Nearly Matches GPT-6 Astra at a Much Lower Price — iScienceLuvr · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol and Ultrafast Announced — soumitrashukla9 · 2026-09-30
• [source] OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Sol: near-Astra intelligence at a fifth of the price — OpenAI · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol rolls out to all paid ChatGPT tiers and Codex today — OpenAI · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol nears Astra intelligence at 1/5 the token price; Pro 500 offers 25x Plus usage — TheTuringPost · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol pricing revealed: $2/$10 per million input/output tokens — bindureddy · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol reportedly launching today: nearly as strong as Astra, much cheaper — mark_k · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol matches Astra on DeepSWE at ~1/5 the cost: $2 input, $10 output — reach_vb · 2026-09-30
• [source] GPT-6.1 Sol hits 75.2% on DeepSWE v1.1 at ~76% lower per-task cost — OpenAIDevs · 2026-09-30
• OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol posts big agent benchmark gains at ~76% lower cost — OpenAIDevs · 2026-09-30
• GPT-6.1 Sol cuts factual errors by 32%, matches Astra at one-seventh the cost — OpenAIDevs · 2026-09-30
• OpenAI positions GPT-6.1 Sol as near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price — OpenAIDevs · 2026-09-30
• [source] Sam Altman launches 6.1 Sol: near-Astra intelligence at 1/5th the price with 95% cache-read discount — sama · 2026-09-30

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