OpenAI releases GPT-6.1 Terra
On 26 October 2026 OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Terra, the cheaper, faster tier of its GPT-6 family, for visual reasoning, computer use and writing. It is available to Plus, Pro, Enterprise and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex and in the API as gpt-6.1-terra, at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, which OpenAI says is 50% below GPT-5.6 Terra and GPT-6.1 Sol. Under its Preparedness Framework OpenAI treats it as Critical in cybersecurity and High in biological and chemical capability.
Why it matters
The release fills the lower tier of the GPT-6 family after GPT-6.1 Sol (29 September): OpenAI says Terra at medium effort scores 15 percentage points above GPT-5.6 Terra on a benchmark of professional computer-use tasks at about a third of the cost, and that the error rate on its internal error-inducing prompts fell from 53.6% to 16.7% at low effort. The independent evaluator Artificial Analysis reports a six-point gain on its Intelligence Index at maximum effort over GPT-5.6 Terra at $0.40 against $1.40 per task, a hallucination rate down from 88% to 38% on its own test, and prices that match OpenAI's. That a cheap tier is rated Critical for cybersecurity under the company's framework is stated on OpenAI's own card.
Dates. The system-card addendum reads "Published October 26, 2026"; the API changelog lists "Oct 26" under October 2026; the launch post shows only the year 2026; Artificial Analysis's article is dated 26 October. What OpenAI says. The model is fast and efficient, combining detailed visual reasoning, precise computer use and clearer writing; it is available to all Plus, Pro, Enterprise and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex; in the API it is gpt-6.1-terra. Standard pricing: $1 per million input tokens, $0.05 per million cached input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. Its own results: at maximum effort Terminal-Bench 4.0 50.3% against GPT-5.6 Terra's published 21.5%; at maximum effort over three times as token-efficient as Claude Opus 5.5 and one-fourth its price per token; for the most complex coding "GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra remain the better choice". Safety: "Critical in cybersecurity and High for Biological and Chemical capability" under the Preparedness Framework, with the same safeguards stack as GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra; the card is an addendum to the GPT-6 Astra system card. What Artificial Analysis says (26 October). Prices as OpenAI's ($1 and $5 per million tokens against $2 and $12 for GPT-5.6 Terra); at maximum effort the Intelligence Index is 6 points above GPT-5.6 Terra at $0.40 against $1.40 per task; Coding Agent Index v2.0 score 48, 6 below GPT-6.1 Sol; on AA-Omniscience the model guesses 38% of the time when it does not know the answer against 88% before; Terminal-Bench 4.0 up about 20 points. What the record does not claim. OpenAI's benchmark results are its own. Artificial Analysis is one evaluator and its measurements were not reproduced. The date of 14 October from a tracker, named in the helper's report, was not used.