# GPT-6.1 Sol Claims Near-Astra Work at a Fifth of Astra’s Token Price

Times of AI Desk · 2026-09-29 · Models

[https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-gpt-61-sol](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-gpt-61-sol)

> OpenAI’s DevDay model is not the shelved Astra successor. GPT-6.1 Sol keeps the $2 / $10 sticker and claims near-GPT-6 Astra results on coding, computer use, and professional work at about one-fifth of Astra’s standard token prices. Those benches are the lab’s.

**Corrected October 14, 2026:** Removed unverifiable claims that Arena had not ranked the model and an unsourced line about Astra Ultrafast availability; fixed internal links.

The model OpenAI shipped at DevDay is the cheap tier, tightened — not the frontier successor it had just pulled. **GPT-6.1 Sol** is an upgrade to [GPT-6 Sol](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-gpt-6-sol-and-luna), priced the same, and sold as **near [GPT-6 Astra](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-gpt-6-astra)** on agentic coding, computer use, and professional work at **one-fifth of Astra’s standard input and output token prices**. The reported hold on GPT-6.1 Astra is what makes “near” do commercial work: buyers are offered Astra-class tasks without the SKU safety staff would not release.

API prices, from the OpenAI post (September 29): **$2** per million input tokens, **$0.10** cached input, **$10** output. Cached input is, OpenAI says, **95%** below this model’s own standard input price and **50%** below GPT-6 Sol’s cached input price. Slug: **`gpt-6.1-sol`**. It is in **ChatGPT Work** and **Codex** for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu. **Not yet in Chat.** **Ultrafast**, up to **8×** token generation versus standard speed in Codex, is promised in the coming days, not on day one.

The sticker matches Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol. The claim that has to be true is cost **per task** against Astra, not the menu price.

## Lab claims

OpenAI says competitor numbers are taken from public reports, and that its own runs were in a research environment or via API, which can differ from production ChatGPT. Effort level is doing a lot of work in every row.

- **DeepSWE 1.1:** matches GPT-6 Astra at roughly **one-fifth** the cost, and beats GPT-6 Sol’s best score by **6.4 percentage points** at a lower effort and cost. The prose post does not print the absolute percent.
- **GDP.pdf** (professional questions over complex PDFs): higher than Opus 5.5 with fallbacks at **less than half** the cost per task across tested settings, and near Astra at roughly **one-fifth** the cost per task.
- **AutomationBench 1.0.6** (47 tools): **2.2 percentage points** above Opus 5.5 at medium effort, at roughly **a third** of the cost, and **4.8 points** above GPT-6 Sol at that same setting. OpenAI again flags that a published Fable 5.1 point omits fallback cost, which hit on about **40%** of tasks.
- **OSWorld 2.0** offline, partial reward, release v2026.08.08: **seven points** above GPT-6 Sol at maximum effort and less than half the cost; within **2.1 points** of Astra at maximum effort at roughly **one-seventh** the cost per task.
- **Terminal-Bench Science 0.1:** more than doubles GPT-6 Sol at maximum effort, at less than half the cost. OpenAI’s average cost per task at max: **$5.47** for 6.1 Sol, **$23.21** for Opus 5.5, **$23.80** for Astra. Astra still leads the score, at **68.1%**. OpenAI says to use Astra for the hardest scientific tasks.
- **Factuality**, an internal set of de-identified chats where a user had already flagged an error — not typical traffic. At low effort, the share of answers with a factual error falls from **11.4%** to **7.7%**, about a **32%** reduction. Across tested settings, the error rate stays within **1.9 percentage points** of Astra at less than one-fifth the cost per task.

On alignment, OpenAI says 6.1 Sol is closer to Astra than GPT-6 Sol was, more willing to state limits, and showed **no attempts to bypass an automated safety reviewer** — the same result it reports for Astra and GPT-6 Sol. One printed stress number: when the search tool is broken, 6.1 Sol fails to say so in **2.1%** of cases, versus **4.9%** for GPT-6 Sol, **1.5%** for Astra, and **28.7%** for Luna, all at maximum effort, on prompts chosen to elicit failures.

## Independent checks

Neither the launch post nor TechCrunch’s write-up cites a third-party leaderboard result.

Artificial Analysis had, the day before, put **Claude Sonnet 5.5 max** at Intelligence Index **56** and **Opus 5.5 max** at **58**, and described GPT-6 Sol configurations as the cheaper comparison at lower Sonnet efforts. A settled **max-effort Intelligence Index** for GPT-6.1 Sol was not in those writeups. The model was hours old. TechCrunch restates OpenAI’s claims, including the shelved-Astra context. It is not a third-party bench.

Until AA or Arena prints a dated row, “near Astra” means OpenAI’s task-level cost curves, not a shared index. The Sonnet 5.5 piece is the caution: identical **$2 / $10** stickers, and AA already showed max-effort Sonnet leaving the cost frontier by writing ~193,000 tokens a task.

## Limits

- Not in consumer Chat. Work and Codex are the surfaces.
- Ultrafast for this model is announced, not available.
- Several headlines are “within N points” or “one-fifth the cost,” not a full score table. Absolute DeepSWE and AutomationBench percents are not in the prose we reviewed.
- Factuality and broken-tool tests are hard, non-representative sets. OpenAI says so.
- The Fable AutomationBench cost still omits fallbacks, by OpenAI’s own note.
- No third-party leaderboard result is cited in the sources used here.

## Sources

- [OpenAI: Introducing GPT-6.1 Sol (September 29, 2026)](https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-6-1-sol)
- [TechCrunch: OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Sol (September 29, 2026)](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/29/openai-launches-gpt-6-1-sol-says-it-nearly-matches-gpt-6-astra-and-costs-less/)
- [Times of AI: GPT-6 Sol and Luna (September 22, 2026)](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-gpt-6-sol-and-luna)
- [Times of AI: GPT-6 Astra (September 3, 2026)](https://timesof.ai/2026/09/openai-gpt-6-astra)
- [WIRED: OpenAI Delays Release of Latest Model Over Safety Concerns](https://www.wired.com/story/openai-delays-release-of-latest-model-over-safety-concerns/)