SHELFCRITTER AI Digest

MODEL

GPT-6.1 Terra

modeltopic-noteopenai

Overview

GPT-6.1 Terra is OpenAI‘s 2026-10-26 mid-tier launch — reportedly gpt-6.1-terra in the API and shipping in ChatGPT Work and Codex on release day for Plus / Pro / Business / Enterprise / Edu tiers. Pricing per Simon Willison’s weblog and The Decoder is reported as $1/M input and $5/M output tokens with a $0.05/M cached-input tier — roughly half the cost of GPT-6.1 Sol, pitched for visual-reasoning and computer-use workloads. The openai.com announcement page returned 403 on direct fetch from this environment, so every specific number here is from third-party coverage rather than the primary.

Timeline

  • 2026-10-28-AI-Digest — Simon Willison posted a hands-on on 2026-10-26 of GPT-6.1 Terra — the mid-tier price point that yesterday’s digest flagged as the Oct 27 compressing-middle datapoint — covering $1/$5 per M-token pricing and the usual pelican-on-a-bicycle comparison battery. Load-bearing clarification: the “GPT-6.1 Terra as reported half-price Sol” framing in yesterday’s digest is directional but under-sourced — today’s independent verification found the Terra tier pricing in only secondary blogs and reports of a possible November launch slip. Willison’s post-release observations are the firmest single-voice signal; the broader “mid-tier compressing while the frontier isn’t” thesis holds directionally but today’s evidence is thinner than the Oct 27 framing suggested.

  • 2026-10-27-AI-Digest — Terra rolled out 2026-10-26 in the API and in ChatGPT Work + Codex per Simon Willison and The Decoder; reported $1/$5 per Mtok ($0.05 cached-input) sits at roughly half the cost of GPT-6.1 Sol while reported to match or beat Sol on third-party benchmarks. Load-bearing clarification: two caveats stack — (1) aggregator pricing for Sol and Terra has drifted enough across the past two weeks that $1/$5 and $2/$10 have both been quoted on different days, and neither pairing is confirmed on openai.com from here; (2) the model-name taxonomy needs care — GPT-5.6 Terra ($2/$12 at list) is a separate SKU, and the Sol → Terra naming reuse is the sort of thing routing stacks will trip on if the pricing claims later turn out to describe a different tier. First-order claim worth carrying: OpenAI shipped a mid-tier GPT-6.1 variant on Oct 26; second-order pricing claim: reported but unconfirmed from the primary. HN pickup 566 pts / 353 cmts on OpenAI’s launch URL.

Key Developments

  1. Mid-tier GPT-6.1 variant launched October 26, 2026 (reported, not primary-confirmed): Terra sits below Sol on reported price and above-or-matching Sol on third-party-reported benchmarks for visual-reasoning and computer-use workloads. Shipping in ChatGPT Work and Codex on release day; standard Chat continues on prior-generation defaults. The openai.com announcement page returned 403 on direct fetch from this environment, so first-party verification of specifics remains outstanding.

  2. Pricing is third-party-sourced and inconsistent across aggregators: $1/$5 per Mtok (plus $0.05 cached-input) is the Willison / Decoder number; other aggregators have quoted $2/$10 on different days in the same two-week window. The “half the cost of Sol” framing is tautological once a consistent pair is chosen, and neither pairing has been confirmed on openai.com from this environment.

  3. Anchor for the mid-tier coding-agent pricing-compression thread: Terra lands the same digest cycle as Replit‘s default-model swap to OpenAI‘s GPT-6.1 Sol + Astra under a reported over-$100M/year contract and 30%+ discount, extending the “mid-tier coding-agent pricing is compressing while the frontier isn’t” framing the Oct 27 digest’s Key Takeaways carry. Aider polyglot top-5 remains three gpt-5 configurations on the frontier axis.

See also: OpenAI, GPT-6.1 Sol, Astra, Codex, Replit, MOC - Major Companies, MOC - Agentic Coding.