OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Sol costs as AI model competition intensifies

OpenAI has reduced API prices for GPT-5.6 Sol, its frontier model for complex professional tasks. Developers now pay $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens for standard requests.

The new rates replace the previous prices of $5 for input and $30 for output. That amounts to a 20% reduction for input and a 33% reduction for output. Reuters reports that the lower pricing also applies to eligible credit plans for ChatGPT Work and Codex. Prices for ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Business subscriptions do not change.

OpenAI says its promotional pricing for GPT-5.6 Sol will remain available at least through November 21, 2026. The company has also recently lowered prices for smaller GPT-5.6 models.

What the new pricing means

GPT-5.6 Sol supports text and image input, with text output. It offers a context window of 1.05 million tokens, which allows users to supply large collections of documents, long research material or extensive project instructions in a single request.

The model supports tools such as web search, file search, code interpreter and computer use through OpenAI’s Responses API. It also supports function calling and structured outputs, features often used to connect a model with business software and repeatable workflows.

There are important limits to the advertised rates. Requests with more than 272,000 input tokens are billed at twice the standard input rate and 1.5 times the output rate for the entire request. Cached input costs $0.40 per million tokens, while cache writes are charged at 1.25 times the normal input rate.

The reduction comes as providers compete more directly on the cost of high-capability models. Reuters notes that Anthropic lists higher standard rates for its Claude Fable 5 and Claude Opus 5 models.

Sources

• GPT 5.6 Sol 20% price reduction – OpenAI API
• OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Sol’s API and credit prices by over 20% for the next three months, to $4/1M input tokens and $20/1M output tokens – Reuters