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- Simon Willison — Creator of Datasette; co-creator of Django/
- Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna, and a new price war/
Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna, and a new price war
Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-09-23)
- OpenAI has initiated a major AI “price war” with the release of GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, featuring drastic price cuts that make GPT-6 Luna exceptionally cheap at $0.10/M input and $0.50/M output, significantly undercutting competitors like Grok 4.7 and challenging Haiku’s low-cost position.
- Anthropic responded by reducing Claude Opus 5.5’s price by 20% to $4/M input and $20/M output, and improving its communication style, with a notable 60% reduction in cache read prices.
- A practical warning: Claude Opus 5.5’s “max” thinking level can over-think simple prompts (like “pelican riding a bicycle”) to the point of hitting its 128,000 output token limit without producing a result, making it potentially unreliable and costly for complex tasks.
- Simon is updating his default models to GPT-6 Sol and Claude Opus 5.5, and specifically recommends GPT-6 Luna for applications like the Datasette Agent demo due to its speed, competence, and extreme affordability.