Anthropic and OpenAI have launched new AI models with lower prices as both companies continue to improve the performance and efficiency of their AI systems.
Anthropic introduced Claude Opus 5.5, while OpenAI launched GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna on September 22. The releases come as AI companies face growing demand for more affordable models that can handle large volumes of work.
Anthropic said Claude Opus 5.5 costs 40% less to run than Opus 5 on typical workloads. Its API price is $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. Cached input reads cost $0.20 per million tokens.
Anthropic also said Opus 5.5 generates responses more than 30% faster than Opus 5 and performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 on most tasks. The company said the model was tested by external evaluators including Frontier Design and METR before release.
OpenAI launched GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna as lower-cost models based on technology developed for GPT-6 Astra. Sol is designed for more demanding tasks such as coding and agent work while Luna focuses on high-volume tasks such as summarization and information extraction.
OpenAI has set the standard API price for GPT-6 Sol at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. GPT-6 Luna costs $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens. OpenAI said both models are priced 50% lower than the promotional pricing for their GPT-5.6 counterparts.
OpenAI also introduced lower pricing for cached inputs, with GPT-6 Sol and Luna offering a 90% discount on cached input-token reads compared with their standard input prices.
The two companies are also focusing on making AI agents more efficient. Lower model costs could make it easier for developers and businesses to use AI for tasks that require large numbers of model requests.
GPT-6 Sol and Luna are available through the OpenAI API and are rolling out in ChatGPT Work and Codex for eligible paid plans. GPT-6 Luna is also available to Free and Go users through the desktop app.
Claude Opus 5.5 is available through Anthropic’s developer platform and major cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
The launches highlight the growing focus across the AI industry on combining stronger model performance with lower operating costs, particularly as businesses look to deploy AI agents and automated workflows at scale.
