Cost and performance comparison
GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-6.1 Sol
Model AOpenAI
GPT-6 Astra
- Cost / 1M Tokens
- $22.00
- 70% in · 30% out mix
- Value Index (score÷cost)
- 4.5
- Higher = better value
- Speed
- 58/100
- Context
- 1.1M
- Tier
- Power Tier
List price from the OpenAI pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.
Check the sourceModel BOpenAI
GPT-6.1 Sol
- Cost / 1M Tokens
- $4.40
- 70% in · 30% out mix
- Value Index (score÷cost)
- 22.0
- Higher = better value
- Speed
- 85/100
- Context
- 1.1M
- Tier
- Smart Tier
List price from the OpenAI pricing page, verified October 12, 2026.
Check the sourceIn-depth analysis
GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-6.1 Sol: Detailed Comparison
GPT-6 Astra is OpenAI's flagship-tier language model with a 1.1M-token context window, excelling at reasoning. GPT-6.1 Sol from OpenAI is a mid-range-tier model supporting 1.1M tokens in context, with standout performance in reasoning.
GPT-6 Astra costs 5.0x what GPT-6.1 Sol does for the same text. That is a steep premium, and it buys a 6-point lead on combined coding and reasoning. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how much of your traffic actually needs the harder model — for most workloads the honest answer is a small fraction of it, which is an argument for routing rather than for picking one. GPT-6 Astra is priced at $10.00/M input tokens and $50.00/M output tokens. GPT-6.1 Sol costs $2.00/M input and $10.00/M output.
On iOPTERA's editorial scores, GPT-6 Astra leads with 99/100 for coding and 100/100 for reasoning, against GPT-6.1 Sol's 96/100 and 97/100.
Capability breakdown
Across the five core benchmark categories, here is how GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol stack up head to head:
Best model by task
- coding: GPT-6 Astra wins with 99/100
- reasoning: GPT-6 Astra wins with 100/100
- data extraction: GPT-6 Astra wins with 97/100
- creative tasks: GPT-6 Astra wins with 97/100
- vision/multimodal: GPT-6 Astra wins with 98/100
Estimated monthly cost at scale
For 10M + 2M tokens of text a month (counted the way OpenAI's tokenizer counts), GPT-6 Astra runs about $200.00 while GPT-6.1 Sol runs about $40.00 — GPT-6.1 Sol saves roughly $160.00 (80%) every month.
What actually decides it
Both models come from OpenAI, so they share a tokenizer, an API surface, and a billing account. Switching between them is a model-string change and nothing else — no new SDK, no re-tokenizing your prompts to re-estimate cost, no second vendor to onboard. That makes routing between them far cheaper to implement than a cross-vendor split.
GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol were released within 0 months of each other, so they are competing on the same evaluations under roughly the same conditions. That makes a direct benchmark comparison meaningful here in a way it usually is not — neither model has the advantage of being measured on a newer, easier set of tests.
Context is effectively a tie: 1.1M against 1.1M. Neither model unlocks a document size the other cannot handle, so this axis should not enter the decision. If you were hoping context would break the tie for you, it will not.
Latency separates them: GPT-6.1 Sol scores 85/100 against 58/100 for GPT-6 Astra, a 27-point gap. That matters for anything a person waits on — chat, autocomplete, interactive tools. For batch and background work it does not, and trading latency for capability there is usually the right call.
GPT-6 Astra is 5.0x the price of GPT-6.1 Sol. Reserve it for the requests that actually need it and route the rest to GPT-6.1 Sol — that hybrid beats either model used alone on cost per useful answer.
What you actually pay
The list price is only the start. Prompt caching, batch processing and long prompts change the bill, and each provider sets them differently. Prices per 1M tokens.
| Pricing term | GPT-6 Astra | GPT-6.1 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| List price (input / output) | $10.00 / $50.00 | $2.00 / $10.00 |
| Cached input | $1.0010% of the input price | $0.105% of the input price |
| Batch API | 50% off input and output | 50% off input and output |
| Long prompts | Over 272K tokens: $20.00 / $75.00 | Over 272K tokens: $4.00 / $15.00 |
| Input with 80% cache hits | $2.80 | $0.48 |
With 80% of input served from the cache, GPT-6.1 Sol costs 83% less than GPT-6 Astra for the same input text, counting each model's tokenizer.
The last row assumes 80% of input tokens are read from the cache, as in a chat app that re-sends a long system prompt or RAG over the same documents. Cache-write and storage charges are not included.
Checked on October 8, 2026 against the pricing pages of OpenAI.
Capability scores
iOPTERA editorial scores across 5 categories — informed by public benchmarks, not measured by us
Coding
Reasoning
Extraction
Creative
Vision
Speed Score
Context Window
What Is a Token?
Models don't read words — they process tokens.
A token is roughly 4 characters of English text (~¾ of a word). Your API bill is priced per million tokens — understanding this directly reduces your costs.
Short phrase
"Hello, world!"
- GPT-6 Astra
- $4.00
- GPT-6.1 Sol
- $0.80
Business email
One typical email (~200 words)
- GPT-6 Astra
- $270.00
- GPT-6.1 Sol
- $54.00
Code file
50-line Python script
- GPT-6 Astra
- $400.00
- GPT-6.1 Sol
- $80.00
Prices shown are for 100,000 runs of each workload — one run costs a fraction of a cent on both GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol, so the number only becomes meaningful at production volume. Input tokens only; add your output volume in the calculator below.
How to check your token usage
response.usage.total_tokensEvery API response includes a usage object. Sum total_tokens across all calls to get your monthly figure, then use the calculator below.
Your Cost Calculator
Enter your actual monthly token usage to see real savings
Quick Presets
GPT-6 Astra
$660.00/mo
$7,920.00/yr
GPT-6.1 Sol
$132.00/mo
$1,584.00/yr
Annual Savings
$6,336.00 saved per year
GPT-6.1 Sol cheaper · $528.00/mo
Related Comparisons
Explore similar model pairs to find your best fit
GPT-6 AstravsGPT-5.6 Sol
$10.00 · $4.00/M input
GPT-6 AstravsClaude Fable
$10.00 · $10.00/M input
GPT-6 AstravsClaude Opus
$10.00 · $4.00/M input
GPT-6.1 SolvsGemini 3.1
$2.00 · $2.00/M input
GPT-6.1 SolvsDeepSeek V4
$2.00 · $1.32/M input
GPT-6.1 SolvsClaude Sonnet
$2.00 · $2.00/M input
GPT-6.1 SolvsGPT-6 Sol
$2.00 · $2.00/M input
GPT-6.1 SolvsGrok 4.7
$2.00 · $2.00/M input