OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Terra, a cheaper, faster model built for computer use
OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Terra replaces GPT-5.6 Terra at half the price, charging $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. The company says it completes tasks over three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol, cuts error rates sharply on screen-based tasks and is available in ChatGPT Work, Codex and the API.
OpenAI has released GPT-6.1 Terra, a mid-tier model it describes as combining detailed visual reasoning with precise computer use. The model understands what is on screen, takes actions across applications and is intended to handle the repetitive desktop work that fills a typical office day: filling forms, editing videos, interpreting technical drawings and automating routine tasks.
Pricing is the headline. At $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, Terra costs half as much as the GPT-5.6 Terra model it replaces and half as much as GPT-6.1 Sol. OpenAI claims it matches GPT-6 Astra on many tasks at a tenth of the per-token price and finishes them more than three times faster than either Astra or Sol.
On OpenAI's internal computer-use benchmark, the error rate at low reasoning effort fell from 53.6 per cent with the previous Terra to 16.7 per cent, and to 4.3 per cent at maximum effort. On Agents' Last Exam it scored 15 percentage points higher than its predecessor at a third of the cost. Coding improved too, with 50.3 per cent on Terminal-Bench 4.0 against 21.5 per cent for GPT-5.6 Terra, though OpenAI still steers the hardest coding work to Sol or Astra.
The model is rolling out to Plus, Pro, Enterprise and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex and is available to developers as gpt-6.1-terra. Under OpenAI's Preparedness Framework it is rated at the Critical level for cybersecurity capability, and its release follows the company's decision last month to cancel GPT-6.1 Astra after it failed internal safety tests.
Why it matters
Computer-use agents have been expensive and error-prone; a model that is both cheaper and markedly more reliable on screen-based tasks moves back-office automation from experiment to budget line. The price cut also continues the deflation that makes high-volume government and enterprise workloads viable.
Indicops view
Much of Indian government and banking work still runs through legacy desktop applications and portals without APIs. Computer-use models are the pragmatic bridge, but they must be deployed with tight scoping, screen-recording audit trails and an explicit list of actions the agent may never take unsupervised. We pilot these agents on read-only and reversible tasks first and expand only after error rates are measured on real workflows.
More in Models
Back to the newsroomGoogle launches Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a $1.50-per-million-token model for coding and agents
Google has released Gemini 4 Hydrogen, a faster and cheaper tier of its Gemini 4 family aimed at everyday coding and agentic work. It costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens across a 1M-token window, and is rolling out through the Gemini API, AI Studio and consumer products.
Alibaba opens a two-week preview of Qwen4-Max with a 1M-token context, but no benchmarks or weights
Alibaba Cloud has opened a time-limited preview of Qwen4-Max, its next flagship model, through the Token Plan only. It offers a 1M-token context and up to 393,216 output tokens, but the documentation lists no pricing, benchmarks or downloadable weights, and the model retires on 25 November.
Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2, 30 per cent faster and 20 per cent cheaper
Anthropic has released Claude Fable 5.2 for general use and Mythos 5.2 for vetted cyber and life-sciences organisations. The company says output is up to 30 per cent faster than the 5.1 generation, at $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output tokens, with lower rates of safeguard blocks.