Anthropic and OpenAI launched new model families in October 2026, one week apart, and the cheapest models from each company ended up with identical prices. Claude Haiku 5.5, released on October 7, and GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, launched the same day by OpenAI, charge the same rate per token. The information was published by Shattered.io.
Both companies also restructured their subscription plans, widening the price gap between free and paid accounts. The move comes amid fierce competition in the AI model market, where constant downward pressure on prices has been the norm.
The pricing convergence among rival models suggests the AI API market is entering a commoditization phase. A Morningstar study cited in the same report shows that models scoring above 40 on the Intelligence Index saw their prices compress from US$ 5.00 to US$ 0.25 per million tokens within a few quarters of launch.
For those running production systems, the news indicates that per-token cost is likely to settle at low levels, reducing the competitive advantage of one model over another based solely on price. The Week in Tech assesses that model selection should increasingly rely on performance for specific tasks and latency requirements, rather than on unit cost alone.