OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Terra with 50% lower API prices than GPT-5.6 Terra

Built for everyday work tasks

OpenAI describes GPT-6.1 Terra as "a significant step up from GPT-5.6 Terra". The company says it is aimed at the communication and computer-based tasks that fill the workday, from drafting proposals and interpreting technical drawings to filling out forms and editing videos.

The pricing is a central part of the pitch. According to OpenAI, the lower API prices make it practical for developers to automate high-volume work, such as reading incoming invoices and entering their details into accounting software. In ChatGPT Work and Codex, the same usage allowance covers more tasks than with GPT-5.6 Terra, and substantially more than with GPT-6.1 Sol or GPT-6 Astra, the company says.

Benchmark results on computer use and vision

OpenAI measured the model on Agents' Last Exam, a benchmark of professional tasks that includes turning architectural drawings into a 3D model. At medium reasoning effort, GPT-6.1 Terra scores 15 percentage points higher than GPT-5.6 Terra at about one-third the cost, according to OpenAI. The company says it performs on par with GPT-6 Astra at one-tenth the price per token.

At max effort, OpenAI says Terra is over three times as token efficient as Claude Opus 5.5 and costs one-fourth as much per token, which it puts at roughly 9x lower cost per task. The company also says Terra completes tasks over three times faster than both GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.

On MMMU-Pro, a visual reasoning benchmark, GPT-6.1 Terra outperforms GPT-5.6 Terra at every reasoning setting and nearly matches GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol at much lower cost, per OpenAI. On OSWorld 2.1, which tests how well agents use desktop apps for multistep tasks, it surpasses GPT-5.6 Terra's best score at medium reasoning effort at a fraction of the cost per task.

Fewer errors and stronger coding

OpenAI says it has invested heavily this year in reducing hallucinations and factual errors. On its internal benchmark of error-inducing prompts, the error rate at low reasoning effort fell from 53.6% with GPT-5.6 Terra to 16.7% with GPT-6.1 Terra. At maximum effort, the rate fell by 18 percentage points to 4.3%, nearly matching GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.

For software engineering, Terminal-Bench 4.0 tests coding agents on command-line problems. At maximum reasoning effort, GPT-6.1 Terra solves 50.3% of tasks, more than double GPT-5.6 Terra's published score of 21.5%. OpenAI notes that GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra remain the better choice for the most complex coding tasks.

On Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1, which covers scientific research tasks such as tracking cell divisions in a time-lapse video, Terra at max reasoning surpasses GPT-6.1 Sol at lower cost. OpenAI says it comes within five points of Opus 5.5 at less than one-fifth the estimated cost.

Safety and alignment

OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Terra meets the Critical threshold in cybersecurity under its Preparedness Framework and maintains the protections developed for GPT-6 Astra. According to the company's evaluations, it is more likely than GPT-5.6 Terra to stay within scope and to honestly disclose limitations and potential blockers to the user. In prompt-injection tests, OpenAI says the model showed strong resistance to malicious instructions. More detail is in the system card.

Pricing and availability

GPT-6.1 Terra is available to all Plus, Pro, Enterprise and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex. Developers can access it through the OpenAI API as gpt-6.1-terra.

• $1 per million input tokens
• $0.05 per million cached input tokens
• $5 per million output tokens

For developers and teams running high-volume workflows, the combination of lower prices and the reported benchmark gains is the main change. OpenAI's own figures suggest Terra is positioned as the cost-efficient option, while Sol and Astra stay the choice for the hardest coding work.