Anthropic and OpenAI rolls out low cost subscription rate for advanced models

Amid the race for AI, Anthropic and OpenAI have introduced a low cost subscription rate for advanced models. This step will increase competitiveness among business customers as companies look for lower cost AI tools. 

These launches occurred just days after these AI companies called for a slower pace of development for the most advanced AI systems. This development comes as US AI labs observe competition from lower-cost open-weight models, particularly from China.

What’s news?

Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 5.5, the first model in its new Claude 5.5 family. The company said this model delivers performance comparable to its more powerful Fable 5.1 model on most work. It costs about 40 per cent less to run than its predecessor, Opus 5.

Opus 5.5 is priced at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. Anthropic said in its post that the model is designed to offer stronger performance while reducing the cost of running complex AI workloads. Anthropic plans to follow the release with Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 in the coming weeks.

OpenAI pushes into everyday AI work

OpenAI has rolled out two new models: GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna. They are built on the same underlying technology as GPT-6 Astra, which debuted earlier this month. Unlike Astra, the new pair is positioned as more affordable, everyday-use alternatives.

According to the company, Sol and Luna bring Astra-level capabilities to routine work while running faster and cheaper. API pricing for both models is 50 per cent below the promotional rates offered for the earlier GPT-5.6 lineup, a drop OpenAI attributes to gains in caching and inference efficiency.

The move underscores that OpenAI and Anthropic are no longer competing purely on model capability, but cost has become just as central a battleground.

Low cost models add pressure

Beyond competing with each other, both companies are contending with a growing wave of open-weight models that users can customize and run on their own infrastructure. Many of these have come from Chinese AI firms, and their pricing is squeezing US labs to follow suit with more affordable offerings.