--- title: "OpenAI Launches GPT-5.6 'Promotion': Luna Price Cut by 80%, Sol Debuts 2.5x Speed 'Reverse Markup' Mode" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/294409210.md" description: "Terra model prices reduced by 20%; Sol model adds Fast mode, boosting speed by up to 2.5x at twice the standard price, with intelligence levels remaining unchanged" datetime: "2026-07-30T20:11:34.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/294409210.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294409210.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/294409210.md) --- # OpenAI Launches GPT-5.6 'Promotion': Luna Price Cut by 80%, Sol Debuts 2.5x Speed 'Reverse Markup' Mode OpenAI has kicked off a "promotion" war this summer. In the early hours of the 31st (Beijing time), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a new pricing matrix for the entire GPT-5.6 product line. The price of the entry-level model, Luna, was slashed by as much as 80%, further lowering the price floor in the AI API market. This adjustment covers three models. The Luna model saw the most aggressive price cut, while the Terra model was reduced by 20%. The flagship Sol model debuted a "Reverse Markup" mode for the first time, introducing a new Fast mode that boosts speed. This mode is priced at twice the standard rate, while maintaining the same level of intelligence. Altman stated on social media that OpenAI's goal is to "provide the best price-to-intelligence ratio at every tier." This statement clearly outlines the company's competitive strategy in the AI API market—using tiered pricing to cover the full spectrum of customers, from cost-sensitive developers to users with high-performance needs. ## Major Price Cut for Luna Model Reshapes Entry-Level Pricing Benchmark The price reduction for the Luna model is the most significant within the GPT-5.6 product line. Input prices have dropped to $0.20 per million tokens, and output prices to $1.20 per million tokens, representing an 80% decrease from previous rates. This directly pushes the usage cost for lightweight inference to an extremely low level. This pricing gives Luna a distinct cost advantage in scenarios involving high-frequency, large-volume calls, making it particularly suitable for developers and enterprise clients who need to process text classification, content generation, or simple Q&A on a large scale. For users with limited budgets and moderate performance requirements, Luna's new pricing significantly lowers the barrier to accessing GPT-5.6 capabilities. ## Moderate Price Cut for Terra Model Consolidates Mid-Range Positioning Compared to the aggressive adjustments for Luna, the Terra model saw a more modest 20% price reduction, with new pricing set at $2 per million tokens for input and $12 per million tokens for output. This more restrained adjustment reflects Terra's mid-range positioning within the product line—balancing performance and cost for application scenarios that require certain model capabilities but do not yet need flagship-level computing power. While maintaining the relative value proposition of this tier, the 20% reduction also exerts some price pressure on competitors. ## Sol Fast Mode: Trading Price for Speed, Targeting Latency-Sensitive Scenarios The Sol model did not see a price cut; instead, a new Fast mode was added. This mode offers up to 2.5x faster response speeds at the API level, priced at twice the standard rate, with no change in the model's intelligence level. The design logic is clear: for real-time conversations, streaming generation, or production environments highly sensitive to latency, developers can pay a premium to gain faster throughput without compromising on performance. By introducing the Fast mode, OpenAI is effectively introducing "speed" as an independent paid dimension into its pricing system, providing a new option for enterprise users with high-concurrency, low-latency needs. ## Price War Deepens, Competitive Landscape Under Pressure This round of price cuts is the latest move by OpenAI to maintain pressure in the AI API market. Altman explicitly defined "the best price-to-intelligence ratio at every tier" as the company's goal, indicating that price reductions are not a one-off measure but part of a systematic competitive strategy. The 80% price cut for the Luna model is particularly noteworthy. This magnitude is sufficient to directly impact competing products with similar positioning in the market and may force other AI model providers to follow suit with their own pricing adjustments. For developers and enterprise users, the continuous decline in API call costs means the marginal economics of AI applications are continuously improving, helping to accelerate commercial deployment in more scenarios. Overall, this adjustment further strengthens OpenAI's pricing dominance in the AI infrastructure layer. ### Related Stocks - [OpenAI.NA](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/OpenAI.NA.md) ## Related News & Research - [OpenAI blinks in face-off with Chinese rivals, making big price cuts](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294528211.md) - [OpenAI Cuts Price Of GPT-5.6 Luna By 80% & GPT-5.6 Terra By 20%](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294396695.md) - [OpenAI Concedes Slow Response as Codex Users Rage Over Vanishing Quotas](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294238934.md) - [OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar tells employees that annualized revenue in July topped all of Q2](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294273022.md) - [New details in the OpenAI Hugging Face hack show how far agents will go: 'It's now remarkably easy'](https://longbridge.com/en/news/294375248.md)