OpenAI Publishes GPT-5.6 API Pricing: Sol $5/$30, Terra $2.50/$15, Luna $1/$6 per Million Tokens
Tags AI · Infrastructure · Enterprise
OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family went GA on July 9, 2026 with three tiers: Sol (flagship) at $5 input/$30 output, Terra at $2.50/$15, Luna at $1/$6 per million tokens, all with 1M-token context. Cached input bills at 10% ($0.50/M for Sol); Batch API halves rates. GPT-5.5 matches Sol pricing at $5/$30. The pricing ladder spans 600x from GPT-5 nano ($0.05/$0.40) to GPT-5.5 Pro ($30/$180). BenchLM notes Terra at $2.50/$15 is the production default — same price point as GPT-5.4 with newer capabilities.
Technical significance
The $2.50/$15 Terra tier anchors the production sweet spot — matching prior-gen pricing while delivering GPT-5.6 capabilities. Cached input at 10% makes long-context system prompts (tools, RAG context, few-shot examples) economical for repeated use. Batch API 50% discount enables cost-effective offline workloads. The 600x price spread across the ladder reflects extreme segmentation: nano for classification/routing, Terra for production, Sol/5.5 for frontier reasoning, Pro tiers for eval-proven edge cases. Competitive parity with Claude Opus 4.8 ($5/$25) and Gemini 3.1 Pro ($2/$12) means model selection will hinge on benchmarks, not pricing.