# OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Luna price by 80%

> OpenAI cut GPT-5.6 Luna 80% to $0.20/$1.20 per million tokens on 30 July 2026.

*Effective 30 July. Terra down 20%, Sol unchanged with a faster mode added.*

By The FeaturedDaily Desk · FeaturedDaily
Canonical: https://featureddaily.com/news/openai-luna-80-percent-price-cut

OpenAI cut prices across two tiers of the GPT-5.6 family on 30 July 2026. Luna fell 80% to $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output. Terra fell 20% to $2 and $12.

> Starting today, GPT‑5.6 Luna, our fastest and most affordable model, will cost 80% less, while GPT‑5.6 Terra, our balanced model for everyday work, will cost 20% less.
> — [OpenAI](https://openai.com/index/advancing-the-price-performance-frontier-with-gpt-5-6/), 2026-07-30

## Pricing table

| Tier | Before | After |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Luna | $1 / $6 | $0.20 / $1.20 |
| Terra | $2.50 / $15 | $2 / $12 |
| Sol | $5 / $30 | $5 / $30 |

Flagship Sol pricing was unchanged. It received a faster inference mode at 2.5x speed for 2x cost, replacing a 1.5x option at the same premium. OpenAI said the Luna and Terra reductions also flow through to subscription usage counting in Codex and ChatGPT Work.

## Stated cause and market context

OpenAI attributed the reductions to efficiency across the models, the inference systems and the agentic harness. It described using GPT-5.6 within Codex to analyse production traffic, rewrite GPU kernels and optimise speculative decoding, reporting roughly 20% lower serving costs and 15% better token-generation efficiency.

The GPT-5.6 family launched on 9 July 2026. In the intervening three weeks Anthropic released Claude Opus 5 at $5/$25 and Google shipped Gemini 3.6 Flash at $1.50/$7.50. DeepSeek V4 was serving at $0.14/$0.28 with 80.6% on SWE-bench Verified.

The efficiency work spanned three layers: the models, the inference systems serving them, and the agentic harness connecting them to tools and context. Kernel rewrites accounted for roughly 20% of the serving-cost reduction; speculative decoding improvements added about 15% better token generation efficiency.

Pricing pressure across the market has been concentrated at the cheap tier, where open-weight and Chinese providers compete most directly. Frontier-tier pricing has held or risen: OpenAI priced GPT-6 Astra at $10/$50 on 3 September, and Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 lists at the same headline rates.

OpenAI has argued since this announcement that buyers should compare cost per completed task rather than cost per token, a framing that favours models finishing agentic work in fewer turns.

## Key takeaways

- Luna: $1/$6 → $0.20/$1.20 per million input/output tokens, a cut of 80%.
- Terra: $2.50/$15 → $2/$12, a cut of 20%.
- Sol: unchanged at $5/$30, with a new 2.5x-speed mode at 2x cost, up from 1.5x.
- Lower rates also apply to how usage counts against Codex and ChatGPT Work subscriptions.
- The cut came three weeks after the GPT-5.6 family launched on 9 July 2026.

## FAQ

### What is GPT-5.6 Luna's new price?
$0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output, down 80% from $1/$6.

### Did Sol get a price cut?
No. Sol remains $5/$30 and gained a 2.5x-speed inference mode at 2x cost.

### Does the cut affect subscriptions?
Yes. OpenAI says the lower rates are reflected in how usage counts against Codex and ChatGPT Work plans.

## Sources

- [Advancing the price-performance frontier with GPT-5.6](https://openai.com/index/advancing-the-price-performance-frontier-with-gpt-5-6/) — OpenAI, 2026-07-30
- [AI price wars: OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Luna prices by 80% as model competition shifts toward cost](https://venturebeat.com/technology/ai-price-wars-openai-cuts-gpt-5-6-luna-prices-by-80-as-model-competition-shifts-toward-cost) — VentureBeat, 2026-07-30
- [OpenAI Cuts GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% Three Weeks After Launch](https://enterprisedna.co/resources/news/openai-gpt-56-price-cut-luna-80-percent-ai-competition-2026/) — Enterprise DNA, 2026-07-31
- [GPT 5.6 Luna Is 80% Cheaper. The Real Story Is the Price of Thinking](https://augmentedmind.substack.com/p/gpt-56-luna-is-80-cheaper) — Augmented Mind, 2026-08-01