GPT-6.1 Terra: OpenAI's $1/$5 Model Matches Astra at One-Tenth the Price
OpenAI shipped GPT-6.1 Terra on October 26, 2026, a mid-tier model priced at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens — 50% below both GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra. OpenAI says Terra solves 50.3% of Terminal-Bench 4.0 tasks at maximum effort (vs 21.5% for GPT-5.6 Terra) and finishes tasks over three times faster than Astra and Sol. Available in ChatGPT Work, Codex, and via API as gpt-6.1-terra.
- Half the price of Sol and 5.6 Terra — Standard API pricing: $1 input / $5 output per million tokens, cached input $0.05/M. This is 50% below GPT-6.1 Sol ($2/$10) and GPT-5.6 Terra ($2/$12). Fast mode doubles the rate; prompts over 272K input tokens reprice the entire request to 2× input/cache and 1.5× output.
- Terminal-Bench 4.0: 50.3% at max effort — OpenAI reports Terra scores 50.3% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 at maximum effort — more than double GPT-5.6 Terra's 21.5%. The company also claims Terra finishes tasks over 3× faster than both GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol on its internal timing runs. All benchmark figures are OpenAI's own; independent replication is pending.
- Computer use and visual reasoning focus — Terra is positioned for "visual reasoning, precise computer use, and clear, natural writing" — reading screens, handling documents, and moving data between applications. It has a 1.05M-token context window and 128K max output. Rolling out to ChatGPT Work and Codex for Plus, Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users; API model ID is <code>gpt-6.1-terra</code>; Codex CLI requires version 0.159.0+.
This article is based on OpenAI's October 26, 2026 announcement, AI Weekly, AIHubMix, Shattered.io, Technology.org, Developer Puter, Quartz, and the OpenAI Developer Community forum. All benchmark figures are OpenAI's self-reported results; no independent reproduction has been published yet. Pricing and availability reflect the official launch details. Features and plan access may vary by region and workspace settings.
On October 26, 2026, OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Terra — a mid-tier model that undercuts both its predecessor (GPT-5.6 Terra) and its current mid-tier sibling (GPT-6.1 Sol) by 50% on standard API pricing. The headline: $1 per million input tokens, $5 per million output tokens, with cached input at just $0.05 per million. For context, GPT-6.1 Sol lists at $2/$10 and GPT-5.6 Terra at $2/$12. GPT-6 Astra remains at $10/$50.
Pricing: the new mid-tier floor
OpenAI's GPT-6 family now has four distinct price points:
| Model | Input /1M | Cached /1M | Output /1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6.1 Terra (Oct 26, 2026) | $1.00 | $0.05 | $5.00 | 1.05M |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | $2.00 | $0.10 | $10.00 | 1.1M |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | $2.00 | $0.20 | $12.00 | — |
| GPT-6 Astra | $10.00 | $1.00 | $50.00 | 1.05M |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.10 | — | $0.50 | — |
Standard short-context API rates per million tokens as announced October 26, 2026. Fast mode = 2× standard. Long-context surcharge: any request over 272K input tokens bills at 2× input/cache and 1.5× output.
Developer Puter notes the 30-minute cache write cost also halved: $1.25/M for Terra vs $2.50/M for both Sol and 5.6 Terra. The practical implication: for agent workloads with repetitive context (system prompts, codebases, screenshots), Terra's effective input cost can approach $0.01–0.02/M tokens at high cache-hit rates — a new floor for computer-use agents.
Benchmarks: OpenAI's claims (unverified independently)
OpenAI's launch materials report the following for GPT-6.1 Terra at maximum reasoning effort:
- Terminal-Bench 4.0: 50.3% (GPT-5.6 Terra: 21.5%) — the long-horizon agent benchmark.
- Task speed: OpenAI says Terra completes tasks over 3× faster than both GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol on internal timing runs.
- Cost per task vs Opus 5.5: OpenAI claims Terra at max effort is over 3× as token-efficient as Claude Opus 5.5 at one-fourth the price per token, working out to ~12× lower cost per task. These are OpenAI's internal evaluations; no outside party has confirmed them.
The company explicitly steers the hardest coding and research work to Sol and Astra. Terra is pitched for "everyday agent work": computer use, visual tasks, form completion, video clipping, and clear writing.
Where Terra fits in your routing logic
If you currently route to GPT-6.1 Sol or GPT-5.6 Terra for agent workflows, Terra is a drop-in candidate for re-evaluation — same API family, same context window, half the price, and OpenAI claims it's faster. The trade-off is reasoning effort: max effort uses several times the tokens of medium, so the 50% price advantage only holds if you don't need max effort for your tasks.
For teams already on Claude Opus 5.5 ($5/$25) or DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (~$0.017/M effective input with cache), Terra's value proposition is narrower: it's an OpenAI-native option for computer-use agents that don't need the absolute frontier on coding. If your stack is OpenAI-first (Codex, ChatGPT Work, Dots), Terra removes the cost excuse for not running agents at scale.
For cost optimizers: cached input at $0.05/M is the new floor for OpenAI models. Build routing around effective cost-per-successful-task, not headline per-token rates.
For the market: OpenAI just compressed its own mid-tier pricing by 50% while claiming double the benchmark score on Terminal-Bench. Whether independent tests confirm the 50.3% figure, the price signal is real: the cost of "good enough" computer-use agents just dropped sharply.
Bottom line: GPT-6.1 Terra launched October 26, 2026 at $1/$5 per million tokens — half the price of GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra, with OpenAI claiming 50.3% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 (vs 21.5% for 5.6 Terra) and 3× faster task completion than Astra/Sol. Available in ChatGPT Work, Codex, and API. Independent benchmark replication is the watch item; the price move is already live.
- AI Weekly — OpenAI Ships GPT-6.1 Terra at $1/$5 Per Million, Half of Sol (Oct 26, 2026)
- AIHubMix — GPT-6.1 Terra vs GPT-5.6 Terra: Half the Price, What Changed (Oct 26, 2026)
- Shattered.io — GPT-6.1 Terra: $1/$5 Pricing, 1.05M Context [2026]
- Technology.org — OpenAI GPT-6.1 Terra: $1/$5 per Million Tokens (Oct 27, 2026)
- Developer Puter — GPT-6.1 Terra Review: Agent Work at Half Sol's Price
- Quartz — OpenAI is launching cheaper mid-tier GPT-6.1 Terra for computer work (Oct 27, 2026)
- OpenAI Developer Community — GPT-6.1 Terra: delivering fast and capable computer use at a lower price (Oct 26, 2026)
Prices and benchmark figures are standard published rates as of October 29, 2026 and can change without notice. Some outbound links may be affiliate links — see our disclosure. Found an error? Tell us and we'll correct it in public.