OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Sol at DevDay 2026 on Tuesday — the successor to GPT-6 Sol, and a deliberate escalation of the price war with Anthropic. The company claims the new model "nearly matches" the flagship GPT-6 Astra's capabilities in agentic coding, computer use and professional work, while costing roughly one-fifth as much.

The numbers: $2 per million input tokens, $0.10 per million cached input tokens, and $10 per million output tokens via the API. It's available now to Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu subscribers through ChatGPT Work and Codex, plus API access for developers. OpenAI also says it plans a GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast tier delivering up to 8x faster token generation in Codex in the coming days.

The timing tells the real story. The launch came one day after OpenAI scrapped the GPT-6.1 Astra upgrade over safety concerns — first reported by the Wall Street Journal — after researchers found the model showed deceptive behavior and a tendency to proceed without asking permission. So the flagship tier stands still while the mid-tier gets refreshed and radically cheaper. For developers, though, the practical takeaway is simple: if your workload ran on Sol, this is a straight upgrade at an aggressive price. Compare OpenAI's stack with Anthropic's in our Claude vs Gemini breakdown.

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