OpenAI announced significant price reductions for its GPT-5.6 models, with the most affordable Luna model seeing an 80 percent price cut. Luna's input token cost dropped to $0.20 per million, and output token cost fell to $1.20 per million, while Terra's prices were reduced by 20 percent. Sol pricing remains unchanged. According to OpenAI, Luna matches the performance of leading models from a year ago, but a task that cost a dollar with those models now runs about 6 cents on Luna, nearly nine times faster. All models are accessible through ChatGPT Work, Codex, and the OpenAI API.
The price cuts are attributed to improvements in OpenAI's infrastructure efficiency, particularly with the GPT-5.6 Sol model. OpenAI claims that the model optimized GPU software on its own, cutting deployment costs by 20 percent. It also improved token generation by more than 15 percent through speculative decoding. Additionally, growing price pressure across the AI market, especially from low-cost Chinese providers, likely influenced the decision. Microsoft is now openly promoting its own MAI models as cheaper alternatives to OpenAI.
OpenAI's move comes amid a broader trend of price competition in the AI market. The company stated that the price war could hurt the broader market if it slows revenue growth at frontier labs whose balance sheets are tied to massive infrastructure investments. Source: thedecoder
