OpenAI Launches GPT-5.6 Slashing Luna Pricing by 80 Percent

OpenAI has launched GPT-5.6, introducing two model variants: Luna, a fast and affordable model, and Sol, a more powerful reasoning engine. The headline news is that Luna pricing has been cut by 80%, making it five times cheaper than before. This represents a major shift in the AI pricing landscape, coming at a time when many in the industry expected only incremental improvements.

The move has surprised observers who believed the frontier model market was entering a period of plateauing performance gains. Instead, OpenAI's latest release delivers a step-change in affordability without sacrificing capability. Developers who rely on Luna for everyday tasks will see their inference costs drop significantly, opening up new use cases that were previously uneconomical. The gap between Luna and Sol remains noticeable, but Luna's new price point makes it an attractive default for most workloads.

The timing is also notable given reports that the Trump administration has lifted restrictions on GPT-5.6, clearing the way for broader deployment. For founders building on AI, this price cut means lower operating costs and the ability to run more experiments without budget concerns. Combined with competing advances from models like Kimi K3 and GLM 5.2, the AI model market is entering a phase of aggressive price competition that benefits end users.