OpenAI is discounting its mid-tier Terra model by 20% and its low-tier, faster Luna model by 80%, partly to steer users toward cheaper tiers and to compete with cheaper emerging Chinese models.
West argues OpenAI's price cuts on Terra (-20%) and Luna (-80%) are an attempt to get users who default to the best model to try cheaper tiers, and to prevent them from switching to cheaper Chinese providers. ✦ AI generated
Wes (Host) · Syntax · 2026-08-04 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 32:45
their Terra, which is the middle one, is now 20% cheaper and Luna, which is their lower one and significantly faster, is 80% off... people are just defaulting to using the best one... And I think that this is probably a push to get people to say, 'Ah, that's significantly cheaper... I'm going to try it now.'... the other reason they're doing this is simply just all of these Chinese models coming out recently that are significantly cheaper... you don't want people switching to an entirely different provider.
verbatim transcript · starts at 32:45
32:27mental health survey. All answers are anonymous. It's five questions. It will take you just a couple of minutes to fill out. I will post a link in chat for that. And it's well worth your time. We're going to be using this information. I'm going to be speaking to some uh experts on the subject and it's going to be for a video on syntax. So check it out. I will post a link in the
32:51chat and that'd be great if you could take the time to fill it out. That'd be awesome. All right, let's talk about uh everything's on sale. I love a good sale. and OpenAI announced on a couple days ago that they're they basically have like kind of three big models right now as their latest ones, right? They have Soul, Terra, and Luna. And like Soul is is the like really good one.
33:17Terra is their balance one, and then Luna is the like the cheap fast one. And they put out a post being I don't know, it's it's kind of like like building abundant intelligence. and when intelligence gets cheaper, we can we can do more things and blah blah blah blah. Essentially, all this to say that their Terra, which is the middle one, is now 20% cheaper and Luna, which is their
33:41lower one and and significantly um faster, is 80% off. And why they are doing this is my take on this is they I think people are just defaulting to using the best one, right? because it's like which model do do I choose? People have a really hard time looking at it. Even if I look at a lot of the like stats on like the Sentry Open router,
34:06people just want the best one because they just want the best experience. And it's really hard because they're expensive as well. Yeah. >> And I think that this is probably a push to get people to say, "Ah, that's significantly cheaper than what I what we're using. I'm going to try it now." Just to get people to simply just try it for some of their other tasks. And I
34:33think on the flip side, the other reason they're doing this is simply just all of these Chinese models coming out recently that are significantly cheaper. People are looking over at them being like, "hm, my bill's getting higher. maybe I should try something else. And if you're in the mood to try something else, you don't want people switching to an entirely different provider. So, they're probably trying to go against that.
34:55>> Yeah. You know what? I think a lot of these too, these uh newer models or small I I think we're going to start to see a lot more domain specific models. I think that's going to be a thing where people like for instance there we we talked last maybe last one about the the zen garden which was like a single prompt to create a zen garden with all
35:16these different models and there was one Chinese model um my gosh why is why am I blanking on it right now um I sent it to CJ either way it crushed all the other ones in the 3D what's that >> miniaxim it was HY3 uh by 10 cent and it it was like for for 20 cents it made like the best CSS Zenguarded and it it crushed