If Luna is so good and cheap, I'm wondering why ChatGPT Free users still only have access to GPT 5.5 Instant. The API pricing for chat-latest is the same as Sol(!),[1] while Luna is 25× cheaper [2]. Even assuming highly inflated API pricing for chat-latest, Luna not being the daily driver on Free and Go plans feels off.
Perhaps users prefer instant responses over thinking models so much so that using a more expensive and less performant non-thinking model is worthwhile.
[1] https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/chat-latest [2] https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/models/gpt-5.6-luna
I bet they'll switch over pretty soon. They always make free users use the older models for a little bit, probably to try to push people to upgrade.
You can actually use Luna without reasoning (set it to "none"). So if they wanted to, they could definitely replace 5.5 Instant with it.
Good points. Though GPT 5.5 Instant does beat out 5.6 Luna non-thinking 34 to 27 on Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.[1][2] This could mean it is optimised for non-reasoning perfomance. So even if beaten on cost and performance, it could still be on the pareto frontier for speed.
It probably costs them a substantial amount of money everyday to not replace Instant with Luna, and the people who want larger models will upgrade regardless of whether they get Instant or Luna on the free tier. It is unlikely the amount of people upgrading just to have latest models would be enough to offset the costs.
[1]https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-5-6-luna-non-reason... [2]https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gpt-5-5-instant-05-26