GPT-6 Astra Pricing: What an Article Costs on OpenAI's New Flagship
GPT-6 Astra costs $10.00 / $50.00 per million tokens — $10.00 input, $50.00 output, $1.00 for cached input. A 1,500-word article costs $0.1014 in API fees, or $0.0507 on the Batch or Flex tier. That is 1.7× GPT-5.5 and the same as Claude Fable 5 to the cent; GPT-5.5 Pro costs 3.6× more.
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on 2026-09-03 and we added it to the price book the next morning. Every figure on this page is computed from the rate transcribed from OpenAI's own pricing page, on the same 1,500-word workflow every comparison on this site uses, so the calculator, the pricing table and this post can never disagree.
GPT-6 Astra API pricing per million tokens
Standard tier, under the 272K-token long-context threshold. Astra offers all four OpenAI tiers, so the same rate also comes in Fast, Flex and Batch versions, priced below.
| Rate | GPT-6 Astra | GPT-5.5 | GPT-5.5 Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input, per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $5.00 | $30.00 |
| Cached input, per 1M tokens | $1.00 | $0.50 | — |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $50.00 | $30.00 | $180.00 |
| Context window | 1,050,000 tokens | 1,050,000 tokens | 400,000 tokens |
| Tiers | Standard · Fast · Flex · Batch | Standard · Fast · Flex · Batch | Standard · Flex · Batch |
Output bills at 5:1 over input on Astra, the ratio every current Claude model uses; GPT-5.5 bills 6:1. GPT-5.5 Pro publishes no cache-read rate at all, so prompt caching cannot reduce its input cost — Astra does, at 10% of the input rate.
What one article costs on GPT-6 Astra
One draft, a 250-word brief, 20% prompt overhead, 1.3 tokens per word. Real invoices run higher than this floor by a model-dependent factor; the methodology page publishes the measured ranges.
| Article length | Standard | Fast (2×) | Flex (½) | Batch (½) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 words | $0.0364 | $0.0728 | $0.0182 | $0.0182 |
| 1,000 words | $0.0689 | $0.1378 | $0.0345 | $0.0345 |
| 1,500 words | $0.1014 | $0.2028 | $0.0507 | $0.0507 |
| 2,000 words | $0.1339 | $0.2678 | $0.0669 | $0.0669 |
| 3,000 words | $0.1989 | $0.3978 | $0.0994 | $0.0994 |
| 5,000 words | $0.3289 | $0.6578 | $0.1645 | $0.1645 |
At the standard rate the 1,500-word article comes to $10.14 per hundred and $101 per thousand; on Batch, $5.07 and $50.70. Three iterative drafts of the same piece cost $0.3510, because each redraft re-sends the previous one.
Where Astra lands among 55 tracked models
The same 1,500-word article on the models a buyer would actually weigh it against: OpenAI's own line above and below it, and the frontier models from the other providers.
| Model | Input / output per 1M | Per article | Per 100 | vs Astra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 Pro OpenAI | $30.00 / $180.00 | $0.3627 | $36.27 | +258% |
| GPT-5.6 Cyber OpenAI | $12.50 / $75.00 | $0.1511 | $15.11 | +49% |
| GPT-6 Astra OpenAI | $10.00 / $50.00 | $0.1014 | $10.14 | — |
| Claude Fable 5 Anthropic | $10.00 / $50.00 | $0.1014 | $10.14 | same |
| GPT-5.5 OpenAI | $5.00 / $30.00 | $0.0604 | $6.04 | −40% |
| Claude Opus 5 Anthropic | $5.00 / $25.00 | $0.0507 | $5.07 | −50% |
| GPT-5.6 Sol OpenAI | $4.00 / $20.00 | $0.0406 | $4.06 | −60% |
| GPT-5.4 OpenAI | $2.50 / $15.00 | $0.0302 | $3.02 | −70% |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Google | $2.00 / $12.00 | $0.0242 | $2.42 | −76% |
| Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.0203 | $2.03 | −80% |
| Grok 4.6 xAI | $2.00 / $6.00 | $0.0125 | $1.25 | −88% |
On a 1,500-word article Astra is rank 49 of 55 tracked models from cheapest to dearest, and the 7th-most expensive of OpenAI's 26 tracked models. Only GPT-5.4 Pro, GPT-5.5 Pro, GPT-5.2 Pro, GPT-5 Pro, GPT-5.5 Cyber and GPT-5.6 Cyber sit above it.
A flagship priced against Anthropic, not against GPT-5.5
Price it as a premium-editorial model, not a default
Token spend is the smallest line in an article budget, and $0.1014 a draft is still less than a minute of editing time at any realistic rate. But it is 5× Claude Sonnet 5, the pick of our model guide, for the same words — so Astra has to earn its place on draft quality, which we have not measured yet. Until it goes through the same judged runs as the rest of the field, treat it the way the guide treats Claude Opus 5: the model for the pieces where a better first draft saves real editing hours, not the default for volume.
Three things to know about the GPT-6 Astra rate
Use Flex or Batch for anything that can wait
Batch halves the bill for up-to-24-hour turnaround and Flex halves it with slower synchronous scheduling, pricing the 1,500-word article at $0.0507 — which equals Claude Opus 5's standard rate at these assumptions. Choose a discounted tier when its turnaround and availability suit the publishing schedule.
Mind the 272K threshold
Astra carries the same long-context rule as the rest of the 1,050K-window GPT line: a prompt over 272K input tokens bills at 2× input and 1.5× output for the whole session, not just the excess. An article brief is a few thousand tokens, so this never touches editorial work, but a retrieval pipeline that loads a research corpus into context can cross it unnoticed.
Caching barely moves an article bill
Cache reads cost $1.00 per million, a 90% discount on input. On an article workflow that saves at most $0.00351 per draft even with every input token cached, because a draft is almost entirely output. Caching pays off when a large fixed system prompt or style guide is reused across many requests, not because you generate many articles.
GPT-6 Astra pricing
How much does GPT-6 Astra cost per million tokens?
$10.00 / $50.00 per million tokens on the standard tier — $10.00 for input and $50.00 for output — with cached input at $1.00. Fast doubles both rates; Flex and Batch halve them. Above 272,000 input tokens the whole session bills at 2× input and 1.5× output.
How much does a 1,500-word article cost on GPT-6 Astra?
$0.1014 in API fees for one draft from a 250-word brief, or $0.0507 on the Batch or Flex tier. A hundred such articles cost $10.14 at standard rate. Those are floor figures at 1.3 tokens per word; recorded usage can run higher, depending on the task and model.
Is GPT-6 Astra more expensive than GPT-5.5?
Yes, by 1.7×: $10.00 / $50.00 against $5.00 / $30.00 per million tokens, so the same 1,500-word article costs $0.1014 instead of $0.0604. It is still far below GPT-5.5 Pro at $0.3627 per article.
How does GPT-6 Astra pricing compare with Claude?
It matches Claude Fable 5 to the cent: both bill $10.00 / $50.00 per million tokens with $1.00 cache reads, so an article costs $0.1014 on either. It is 2× Claude Opus 5 ($0.0507) and 5× Claude Sonnet 5 ($0.0203). Astra's edge over Fable is the tier menu: it offers Fast and Flex, which the tracked Fable 5 does not; Claude Opus 5.5, 5 and 4.8 do offer Fast.
Does GPT-6 Astra have a batch discount?
Yes. Astra offers all four OpenAI tiers. Batch is 50% off for up-to-24-hour turnaround and Flex bills the same halved rate synchronously with slower scheduling, pricing the 1,500-word article at $0.0507. Fast costs 2× standard for roughly 2.5× the speed, $0.2028 per article.
Should I switch my article pipeline to GPT-6 Astra?
Not on price. Astra costs 5× what the mid-tier models charge for the same draft, so the case for it has to be made on draft quality, which we have not yet measured. Price it for the pieces where editing time dominates the budget and keep routine volume on a mid-tier model.
Where these numbers come from
The rates are transcribed from OpenAI's published pricing and re-verified weekly; the addition is logged in the verification changelog under 2026-09-24. Per-article figures apply the token model documented on the methodology page. GPT-6 Astra has not yet been through the measured tokens-per-word runs, so its per-article figures are the 1.3 tokens-per-word floor and carry no measured correction; the other models in the comparison tables are quoted at the same floor so the columns stay comparable.
OpenAI's flagship now costs what Anthropic's does
GPT-6 Astra is $10.00 / $50.00 per million tokens and $0.1014 per 1,500-word article — level with Claude Fable 5, well above GPT-5.5, well below the Pro tier. Whether it is worth 5× a mid-tier draft depends on how much editing it saves, and that is a quality question we will answer when it has been through the judged runs.