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OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Sol at one-fifth of Astra's token price

September 29, 2026 at 17:16 EDT

Foundation Models
AI Agents

OpenAI on Tuesday released GPT-6.1 Sol, an upgrade to the week-old GPT-6 Sol that the company says nearly matches flagship GPT-6 Astra on agentic coding, computer use, and professional work at one-fifth of Astra's standard input and output token prices. The new model keeps Sol's list rates of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, and cuts cached input to $0.10.

September 29, 2026 · OpenAI

Near-Astra intelligence at one-fifth the price

GPT-6.1 Sol keeps a $2 input and $10 output rate per million tokens. OpenAI says it matches GPT-6 Astra on a hard coding test at about one-fifth of Astra's standard token prices.

Standard input price, per million tokens

Same unit, drawn to scale: five blocks for Astra, one block for Sol.

$10

GPT-6 Astra

GPT-6.1 Sol

5× on the rate card. Output follows the same ratio: $50 for Astra versus $10 for Sol.

$0.10

Cached input per million tokens, half of GPT-6 Sol

+6.4 pt

DeepSWE versus GPT-6 Sol's best, at lower effort

+7 pt

OSWorld offline versus GPT-6 Sol at max effort

$5.47

Average science task, versus $23.80 on Astra

Where it closes the gap

Matches Astra on DeepSWE at roughly one-fifth the cost. An independent index puts it one point behind Astra and under a quarter of Astra's cost per task, at $0.72 versus $3.26.

Where it still trails

Not in Chat. Within 2.1 points of Astra on OSWorld, not ahead. Astra still leads science at 68.1%. Sol also writes about 10–30% more output tokens than GPT-6 Sol.

Live for agents today; a faster tier is still ahead

API id gpt-6.1-sol. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu in ChatGPT Work and Codex. Context window 1.05 million tokens. Knowledge cutoff April 30, 2026.

Sol Ultrafast is coming soon, described as up to 8× faster generation in Codex. Astra remains the recommendation for the hardest scientific work.

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