Skip to content

An editorial team and a community building with AI

vibecoding.incJoin Discord ↗
← All articles

News · OpenAI · 2 min read

Event date: · Published:

OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol for complex coding at a lower cost than GPT-6 Astra

On September 29, 2026, OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol, priced at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens in the API. It became the default in Codex CLI and reached GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Foundry the same day.

Archive entry: this covers an event from September 29, 2026, and we published it on November 8, 2026. The details come from sources dated at the time and may have changed since.

On September 29, 2026, OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol, a model built for complex coding and professional work at a lower cost than GPT-6 Astra, as announced in Introducing GPT-6.1 Sol. OpenAI described it as near-Astra intelligence at one-fifth of Astra's standard API input and output token prices.

What changed

  • API pricing: per 1M tokens, for prompts up to 272K input tokens, $2 input, $0.10 cached input, $2.50 cache write and $10 output.
  • API behavior: multi-agent support was in beta, and tool calling required the Responses API.
  • Codex: per the ChatGPT and Codex changelog, OpenAI described near-Astra performance at a lower cost than Astra in Codex and ChatGPT Work, and Codex CLI 0.159.1 made GPT-6.1 Sol the default model in the bundled and Amazon Bedrock catalogs.
  • GitHub Copilot: GitHub made GPT-6.1 Sol generally available in Copilot on Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise, and said it used noticeably fewer tokens and steps, according to the GitHub changelog.
  • Microsoft Foundry: the Microsoft Foundry roundup for September 2026 listed GPT-6.1 Sol as generally available on September 29, 2026, with 50% lower cached-input pricing than GPT-6 Sol.

What it meant for builders

For people building on OpenAI models, GPT-6.1 Sol became the default in Codex CLI and reached Copilot the same day, which made its $2 input and $10 output pricing the reference point for cost and quality in OpenAI-based coding work.

Follow-up and sources

Ultrafast for GPT-6.1 Sol followed on October 8, 2026. The OpenAI API changelog and the OpenAI news RSS feed also recorded the launch.

Sources

Written with AI assistance, strictly from the sources listed above. Before it went live, automated checks verified its dates, sources and every language edition.

OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol for complex coding at a lower cost than GPT-6 Astra | vibecoding.inc