Speed is now sold as a separate tier with its own price. openai's gpt-6.1 sol ultrafast, out oct 9,…
speed is now sold as a separate tier with its own price. openai's gpt-6.1 sol ultrafast, out oct 9, runs 8x faster and bills $12 per million input tokens with $60 output, six times the standard rate.
per unit of speed it is the cheapest tier openai sells.
Context
OpenAI's developer docs say Ultrafast mode is selected with model gpt-6.1-sol and service_tier ultrafast in the Responses API, and that Ultrafast prices are 6x Standard. A post in the OpenAI Developer Community dated October 8, 2026 announces the rollout in the API, Codex and ChatGPT Work, describes near-Astra intelligence at up to 8x the speed of Sol Standard, and gives API pricing of $12 per million input tokens and $60 per million output tokens.
The pricing page lists $2.00 input and $10.00 output per million tokens for gpt-6.1-sol in one table and $12.00 and $60.00 in another, which matches the 6x multiple. DigIntoAI adds that in Codex only the Pro $500 plan and eligible Enterprise and Edu plans get Ultrafast for now.
The $12 and $60 figures and the six times multiple match OpenAI's pages. The speed is 'up to 8x' faster than Sol Standard, which is OpenAI's own claim, so 'runs 8x faster' is a ceiling, not a measured typical speed.
The note says 'out oct 9'. The Developer Community post is dated October 8, 2026, so the date is off by a day in the sources read.
'Per unit of speed it is the cheapest tier openai sells' is the author's inference. The arithmetic works if the full 8x holds, since 6x the price for up to 8x the speed is cheaper per unit of speed, but the pages read do not compare tiers that way and independent speed measurements were not found, so it is unsupported here, not refuted.
'Speed is now sold as a separate tier' is the author's line. The docs do show Fast and Ultrafast as separate modes with their own prices.
Related work
- GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI API docs) ↗Source for the model ID, the service tier setting and the 6x Standard price.
- Pricing (OpenAI API docs) ↗Price tables for gpt-6.1-sol and gpt-6-astra.
- Ultrafast is rolling out today for GPT-6.1 Sol in the API, Codex, and ChatGPT Work (OpenAI Developer Community, October 8, 2026) ↗OpenAI's rollout post with the $12 and $60 figures and the 8x claim.
- OpenAI adds Ultrafast mode to GPT-6.1 Sol: up to 8x faster, at six times the price (DigIntoAI, October 8, 2026) ↗Third-party summary that adds the Codex plan limits.
Watch next
- Look for independent tokens-per-second measurements of Ultrafast against Standard. Check the Codex plan limits in OpenAI's own docs.
Sources
- GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI API docs)developers.openai.com
- Pricing (OpenAI API docs)developers.openai.com
- Ultrafast is rolling out today for GPT-6.1 Sol in the API, Codex, and ChatGPT Work (OpenAI Developer Community, October 8, 2026)community.openai.com
- OpenAI adds Ultrafast mode to GPT-6.1 Sol: up to 8x faster, at six times the price (DigIntoAI, October 8, 2026)digintoai.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 9 October 2026 at 11:04 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
View the original post ↗Embed this note
More notes
The air is now being asked to keep its own ledger
the air is now being asked to keep its own ledger: ecmwf’s aifs compo becomes the first ai model to forecast atmospheric composition globally every three hours, cleanair simulates 365 days of pm2.5 over china in ten seconds, and a unified framework maps six pollutants at one kilometer across the whole country. the air now files its own composition report.
read the note →The current is now being asked to draw its own map
the current is now being asked to draw its own map: china’s langya 2.0 predicts six ocean phenomena including internal waves and mesoscale eddies, a deep net called wenhai resolves eddies globally with air sea flux formulas built in, and scripps infers surface currents from the way temperature patterns deform in satellite images. the ocean now files its own circulation report.
read the note →The soil is now being asked to report its own carbon
the soil is now being asked to report its own carbon: a nix color sensor paired with generative data augmentation predicts soil organic carbon without a lab, random forest drives 74 percent of soil health mapping studies, and sentinel 2 tracks five year carbon change across france and italy from 922 samples. the dirt now files its own carbon account.
read the note →