GPT-5.6 Sol
OpenAI's top tier model, and the one to reach for when the problem is genuinely hard rather than merely long.
The facts at a glance
Pricing last checked August 7, 2026. Prices change and vary by region. Check the official pricing page ↗
Assessment
What it does well
- OpenAI reports state of the art results across coding, knowledge work, cybersecurity, and science
- Very large 1.05 million token context for whole repository and whole corpus work
- Cached input is billed at USD 0.50 per million, a tenth of the standard input rate
Where it falls short
- Fine tuning is not supported
- Requests above 272,000 input tokens are billed at twice the input rate and 1.5 times the output rate, so the full context is far more expensive than the headline price suggests
- No free access route at all
Privacy and data control
API data handling follows OpenAI platform terms, which differ from the consumer ChatGPT settings. Confirm the terms for your specific account type before sending sensitive material.
The longer read
Where it fits
Sol is the top of the GPT-5.6 family. OpenAI positions it as its strongest model for coding, knowledge work, cybersecurity, and science, and it shares the 1.05 million token context window with the rest of the family.
The pricing detail that catches people out
The headline rate applies below 272,000 input tokens. Above that threshold OpenAI bills input at twice the rate and output at 1.5 times. If your plan depends on routinely using the full million token window, model the cost at the higher rate rather than the advertised one.
How it performs by outcome
We assess products against a job, not a leaderboard. These are the outcomes this entry is compared under.
Worth comparing against
How this profile was produced
Source review. Every fact here is drawn from the provider documentation linked below and checked on the date shown. We have not yet run this entry through a controlled test, and no scoring is implied.
Read the full review methodology →