GPT-6.1 Terra halves OpenAI's API prices and still gains ground on its larger models

OpenAI has released GPT-6.1 Terra, a model it says pushes the cost-to-performance boundary further than any of its predecessors. API prices are half those of GPT-5.6 Terra.

Terra is OpenAI's closest competitor to Anthropic's mid-tier Sonnet series at half the price. Input tokens cost $1 per million, output tokens $5, compared to $2 and $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $2 and $12 for GPT-5.6 Terra. Cached inputs drop to just $0.05 per million tokens, a quarter of the previous rate.

According to OpenAI, the model combines fast visual reasoning with precise computer control and a more natural writing style, targeting everyday work tasks from drafting proposals to interpreting technical drawings to filling out forms. GPT-6.1 Terra is available now for Plus, Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex, as well as through the API.

Analysts say cost efficiency has hit a new high

Artificial Analysis calls GPT-6.1 Terra a new benchmark for intelligence per dollar. At maximum reasoning effort, the model gains 6 points on the Intelligence Index over GPT-5.6 Terra while costing less than a third per task ($0.40 versus $1.40). At lower effort levels the gains are even larger—7 to 13 points—placing the model on the Pareto frontier, the point where cost and performance can no longer both improve simultaneously.

In the new Coding Agent Index v2.0, Terra scores 48, six points below GPT-6.1 Sol (54) and 17 points above GPT-6 Luna (31). The hallucination drop is even bigger. On the private AA-Omniscience benchmark, the model resorts to guessing only 38 percent of the time when it lacks the answer, down from 88 percent for GPT-5.6 Terra. Accuracy also rose by two points.

Computer control three times faster than the largest models

Terra falls under OpenAI's "critical" safety threshold

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