OpenAI cuts API prices 50%, Opus 5.5 runs 40% cheaper: model pricing shifts to cost per task
krishnan · x · 2026-09-25
OpenAI and Anthropic released cheaper models within 90 minutes of each other: OpenAI cut GPT-6 Sol and Luna API prices by 50% vs GPT-5.6 promotional pricing, while Anthropic claims Opus 5.5 performs near Fable 5.1 on most work at 40% less running cost than Opus 5.
- The surface story is falling prices; the deeper shift is that both companies now pitch economics per coding task, business workflow, or computer-use job rather than per million tokens.
- That matters because cheap tokens can still yield expensive outcomes after retries, human review, failed tool calls, and unusable artifacts — the unit buyers care about is accepted work.
- Caveat: these workflow comparisons remain vendor-led; different harnesses, effort settings, and scoring methods can flip results, so a polished cost-per-task chart is not an independent benchmark yet.
- Advice for enterprise teams: benchmark on your own workload portfolio, factoring in retries, latency, review time, and failure cost. The winner is the model with the lowest verified cost per completion, not the cheapest tokens.
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