OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Terra at $1/$5 per million tokens with sharply lower factual errors

GPT-6.1 Terra fills the gap left when last month's GPT-6 release shipped only Sol and Luna. Terra is OpenAI's medium-tier everyday model, focused on computer use, visual reasoning and agent work, and now replaces GPT-5.6 Terra in ChatGPT and Codex.

The headline is cost-per-task. OpenAI says Terra matches GPT-6 Astra's medium-effort Agents' Last Exam result at $0.29 per task versus $4.82, runs about three times faster than Astra, and scores 15 points above GPT-5.6 Terra. Factual errors at low effort dropped from 53.6% to 16.7%, and it handles 50.3% of Terminal-Bench 4.0 tasks at maximum effort. Context reaches 1 million input tokens.

Competitively, this continues the steep price-cut trend developers are debating: an r/OpenAI thread on why OpenAI and Anthropic cut prices up to 80% in months drew 713 upvotes. Terra pressures xAI's Grok 4.7 ($2/$6) and makes OpenAI the likely default for cost-sensitive agents.

Caveats: the benchmarks are largely OpenAI's own, and a 16.7% factual error rate at low effort is still substantial. HN discussion (527 points) centered on whether agent benchmark claims hold up in real workloads.