GPT-6.1 Sol: Nearly OpenAI’s Best Model at a Fifth of the Price

OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol, a cheaper follow-up to GPT-6 Sol that lands close to the company’s top model on coding and computer use. It costs $2 per million input tokens, one-fifth of GPT-6 Astra’s price, and an independent tracker puts the two models one index point apart on intelligence.
artificial-intelligence
software-engineering
Author

Kabui, Charles

Published

2026-10-04

Keywords

gpt-6-1-sol, openai, model-pricing, cached-input, agentic-coding, ai-cost

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OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol on September 29, a cheaper follow-up to GPT-6 Sol that gets close to the company’s top model, GPT-6 Astra, on coding, computer use, and office work. It costs $2 per million input tokens, $0.10 for cached input, and $10 per million output, which OpenAI says is one-fifth of Astra’s standard price. Cached input, the reused context that AI agents rely on, is 95% below standard input. The model reaches Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex, not yet the main ChatGPT chat, and developers can call it as gpt-6.1-sol, with a faster Ultrafast tier promised soon.

Independent tracker Artificial Analysis scores Sol 52 to Astra’s 53 on its Intelligence Index, a one-index-point gap, at $0.72 per task against $3.26. Near-flagship quality now sits at the market’s median token price. For teams running agents that reuse context, the cached-input rate is what moves the bill. OpenAI also reports a 7% gain over GPT-6 Sol on the OSWorld 2.0 computer-use tests, and a science-workflow task cost of $5.47 against Astra’s $23.80.

OpenAI is now pricing its second-best model against its own best one, not a rival’s. When an older flagship gets a cheaper sibling that trails it by a single index point, the premium people pay for the very top model is what starts to shrink.

Read More: GPT-6 Astra Is the First OpenAI Model Rated ‘Critical’ for Cybersecurity

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BibTeX citation:
@misc{kabui2026,
  author = {{Kabui, Charles}},
  title = {GPT-6.1 {Sol:} {Nearly} {OpenAI’s} {Best} {Model} at a
    {Fifth} of the {Price}},
  date = {2026-10-04},
  url = {https://toknow.ai/posts/gpt-6-1-sol-near-astra-fifth-of-the-price/},
  langid = {en-GB}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Kabui, Charles. 2026. “GPT-6.1 Sol: Nearly OpenAI’s Best Model at a Fifth of the Price.” https://toknow.ai/posts/gpt-6-1-sol-near-astra-fifth-of-the-price/.