OpenAI has introduced GPT-6.1 Terra, a lower-priced model aimed at visual reasoning, computer use and everyday professional tasks, with standard API prices of $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens.
How much cheaper is Terra?
OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Terra’s standard API prices are 50% lower than GPT-5.6 Terra and GPT-6.1 Sol. The model pages show the practical change across common text-token billing categories.
Model or comparison
Input tokens
Cached input tokens
Output tokens
GPT-6.1 Terra
$1.00 per million
$0.05 per million
$5.00 per million
GPT-5.6 Terra
$2.00 per million
$0.20 per million
$12.00 per million
Change versus GPT-5.6 Terra
50% lower
75% lower
About 58% lower
The output-token cut matters because multi-step agents often spend heavily on reasoning and generated responses, not only incoming prompts. The cached-input cut matters for repeated workflows that reuse long instructions, schemas or reference files.
The lower token rate is not the same as the final cost of a computer-use workflow. OpenAI’s pricing notes say tool-specific features such as search and computer use can add per-tool-call fees. Long-context requests, regional processing, Batch or Flex pricing, and Fast mode can also change the final bill.
What Terra is built to automate
OpenAI describes GPT-6.1 Terra as a fast and efficient model for visual reasoning, precise computer use and natural writing. Its API documentation points to product-photo matching, technical drawing interpretation, action on application screens, and drafting or revising text.
The model supports text input and output, plus image input. Audio and video are not supported on the model page. OpenAI lists a 1,050,000-token context window, 128,000 maximum output tokens, a June 1, 2026 knowledge cutoff, and reasoning effort settings from none through max. Tool calling requires the Responses API.
OpenAI reports stronger performance, with caveats
In OpenAI’s launch evaluation, GPT-6.1 Terra scored 15 percentage points higher than GPT-5.6 Terra on Agents’ Last Exam at medium reasoning effort, at about one-third the cost. OpenAI says it performed on par with GPT-6 Astra on that evaluation at one-tenth Astra’s price per token.
OpenAI also says Terra at max effort was more than three times as token efficient as Claude Opus 5.5, with one-fourth the price per token, producing roughly a nine-times lower cost per task in that comparison. The company says Terra completed tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.
For coding, OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Terra solved 50.3% of Terminal-Bench 4.0 tasks at maximum reasoning effort, compared with GPT-5.6 Terra’s published score of 21.5%. OpenAI still says GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra remain the better choice for the most complex coding tasks.
Those figures are vendor-reported launch evaluations, not a guarantee for every deployment. OpenAI’s safety addendum says some evaluations were performed in research environments or through the API and may differ from production ChatGPT because prompts, tools and reasoning settings can vary.
Safety status is part of the release
OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Terra meets its Critical cybersecurity threshold under the company’s Preparedness Framework. The Safety Hub addendum says OpenAI is treating Terra as Critical in cybersecurity and High in biological and chemical capability, applying the same safeguard stack used for GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra.
Cheaper computer-use models can make autonomous desktop and browser workflows easier to deploy at higher volume. Permission controls, audit logs, approval gates, limited tool access and human review still matter when agents can interact with business software.
Availability spans ChatGPT, Codex, API and Bedrock
OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Terra is available to Plus, Pro, Enterprise and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex. Developers can access it through the OpenAI API as gpt-6.1-terra.
Amazon Bedrock also lists an OpenAI GPT-6.1 Terra model card. The Bedrock page describes the model as active, gives a model launch date of Oct. 26, 2026, and lists end-of-life as no sooner than Oct. 26, 2027.
The launch comes as token prices keep falling
Terra arrives during a broader drop in AI token prices. Ramp’s AI Index, which uses transaction data from more than 85,000 American businesses, reported that the blended price per million OpenAI and Anthropic tokens fell to $0.56 in the week ending Oct. 23, 2026, down 26.8% from the week ending Sept. 25. In the same tokenomics sample, OpenAI’s blended price fell 42.4% to $0.46.
Ramp says that tokenomics data comes from businesses using its Token Spend Management product and is not representative of Ramp’s total AI spend volume. Even with that qualifier, the data supports the same direction as Terra’s launch: paid business AI use is being pushed toward cheaper inference, higher volume and closer cost control.
What businesses should measure next
For businesses, the practical metric is cost per successful task, not token price alone. A cheaper model can still be expensive if it fails often, needs repeated prompts, misuses tools or requires long manual review. A more expensive model can be cheaper in production if it completes more work correctly with fewer reruns.
Terra’s best early fit appears to be repeatable, high-volume work where visual input and software actions are central and errors can be caught before reaching customers. Invoice intake, catalog matching, form transfer, document review, screen-based quality checks and internal workflow automation are the kinds of tasks OpenAI’s examples point toward.
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