OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% to $1.40, undercutting Google’s Gemini
OpenAI just made its cheapest frontier model dramatically more affordable — and the timing is anything but accidental. The company slashed prices on two models in its GPT-5.6 series, cutting GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% and GPT-5.6 Terra by 20%, while simultaneously launching a premium Fast mode for its flagship GPT-5.6 Sol. CEO Sam Altman announced the changes publicly on X, calling them “major price cuts today.” The moves land roughly three weeks after the GPT-5.6 series first became broadly available — and just days after rivals Google and Anthropic each made their own cost-efficiency plays.
Key takeaways
- GPT-5.6 Luna’s combined token price dropped 80% to $1.40 per million tokens, undercutting Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite ($2.80) and Gemini 3.6 Flash ($9).
- GPT-5.6 Terra fell 20% from $17.50 to $14 per million tokens combined, matching Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview for context windows up to 200,000 tokens.
- Sol Fast mode adds up to 2.5x throughput at $70 per million tokens combined — double the Standard rate — for latency-sensitive production workloads.
- Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 remains priced at $30 combined per million tokens, delivering near-Fable 5 performance at the same rate as Opus 4.8.
- OpenAI’s Luna now competes directly in the low-cost model tier alongside offerings from Google, Xiaomi, DeepSeek, and MiniMax.
OpenAI Announces Major Price Cuts Across the GPT-5.6 Series
The numbers tell a stark story. Luna, the smallest and fastest model in the GPT-5.6 lineup, previously carried a combined input-and-output price of $7 per million tokens. After the cut, that figure collapses to $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens — a combined $1.40. For high-volume applications processing millions of requests daily, that gap is enormous.
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