Databricks: Opus 5.5 cuts coding costs 20%, GPT-6 Luna is 20x cheaper per task
pwendell · x · 2026-09-29
Databricks' pwendell shares workload analysis of 2,400 engineers plus offline evals on the latest model wave:
- Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna clearly expand the cost/quality frontier; Opus 5.0 was a high-cost dud.
- Opus 5.5 is the highest-quality mid-tier model, beating all prior Opus and GPT-6 Sol, with consistent 20% same-task cost cuts vs Opus 4.8 — now Databricks' recommended daily coding default.
- GPT-6 Luna is at least 20x cheaper per task than Opus 5.5, roughly matching Opus 4.6 quality on hard evals at 99.3% lower cost — a 100x cost drop in 9 months (preliminary).
- Stack: Unity Gateway for routing/agent tracing; harnesses include Omingent, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
Related event: Databricks Tests Show GPT-6 Luna Costs 20x Less Than Opus 5.5(2 posts)→
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