🔍 Read the full analysis: OpenAI And Anthropic Are Courting Each Other’s Customers. What’s In The Deal? on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
OpenAI is using discounts and expanded seat offers to compete for customers that use Anthropic, according to reporting cited by ThorstenMeyerAI.com. Reported deals include a discount above 30% for Replit, while a DataCamp executive described expected total cost savings of 80% to 90%—not a 90% cut to OpenAI’s list prices. Both companies have also reduced some model prices, while plan limits and contract terms can affect what customers actually pay.
OpenAI is offering discounts and expanded seat arrangements as it seeks to win customers that use rival Anthropic, according to an October 24 report by The Information summarized by ThorstenMeyerAI.com. The reported offers come amid rapid cuts to some published model prices, but the headline figure of 80% to 90% savings refers to one customer’s expected total cost reduction, not a discount of that size on OpenAI’s list prices.
The reported deals vary by customer. The source says OpenAI offered Replit a discount of more than 30% on a contract valued at more than $100 million a year, citing a person familiar with the reporting in The Information. A U.S. bank with more than $7 billion in assets was reportedly offered 500 ChatGPT seats at no extra charge, double its previous allocation. The source does not provide the bank’s name or the full terms of either arrangement.
DataCamp CEO Jonathan Cornelissen said OpenAI’s pricing would reduce the company’s costs by 80% to 90%. That is an estimate of savings against DataCamp’s existing setup, as described in the source, not a claimed reduction of 80% to 90% from OpenAI’s published rates. For Replit, CEO Amjad Masad said at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 16 that the company was no longer working with Anthropic and added, “I think ChatGPT is better now.” He later told TechCrunch that Replit remained model-agnostic and OpenAI was its “preferred partner”; a person familiar with the partnership told TechCrunch the partnership was still in place.
Customer use has also shifted at Rippling, according to CEO Parker Conrad. He said OpenAI’s share of the company’s coding work rose from 16% in May to 52%, while Anthropic’s share fell from 57% to 18%. Conrad attributed the change to cost. Those figures describe Rippling’s use, not the wider market.
Infographic 01 · The price slide
Four months, a fraction of the price.
What a million output tokens cost on each vendor’s price list, from the June previews to today. Bars show the price; shorter is cheaper.
OpenAI · output price per 1M tokens
List prices, standard tier
Anthropic · output price per 1M tokens
List prices, standard tier
Same scale in both panels. Fable 5.1 kept its $50 output price and cut cache reads instead.
The quieter cut: cache reads
matters most for agents
Cache-read price per 1M tokens, same scale in all three.
Woolf estimates cached tokens make up 96–99% of token spend in agentic coding. Anthropic says Opus 5.5 costs 40% less than Opus 5 and Fable 5.1 about 25% (up to about 45%) less than Fable 5 on typical workloads; those are vendor claims. Most rows compare a successor model with its predecessor. Anthropic’s newer tokenizer produces about 30% more tokens for the same text, so per-token prices are not directly comparable across vendors.
Sources: OpenAI API pricing (26 Oct 2026); OpenAI announcements (26 Jun–29 Sep 2026); Anthropic API pricing (26 Oct 2026); Anthropic announcements (30 Jun–22 Sep 2026); Vercel AI Gateway index (Oct 2026); Max Woolf (25 Oct 2026).
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Discounts Put AI Contracts in Play
The offers show that competition is moving beyond public price lists into customer-specific contract terms. For companies buying AI services, the effective cost may depend on seat counts, usage caps, credits, caching and negotiated discounts—not only the advertised price per token or monthly subscription.
For buyers, these terms make vendor comparisons dependent on contract details and workload requirements. A lower rate may not reduce the total bill if usage limits are tighter or a model performs differently on a company’s tasks. The source recommends testing more than one provider and comparing total cost and actual results; this is a purchasing consideration, not a guaranteed outcome.
Price changes also affect individual subscribers. The source says OpenAI reduced the usage included in new $200 Pro subscriptions without changing the monthly price, while Anthropic added capped, expiring API credits to some plans. A stable subscription fee can therefore cover a different amount of service over time.
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List Prices Fell Alongside the Offers
OpenAI and Anthropic have cut some published prices over several months, according to the vendor pricing pages and announcements checked by ThorstenMeyerAI.com on October 26. The source reports OpenAI’s Sol model moving from $5 input and $30 output per million tokens in June to $2 and $10 for GPT-6.1 Sol in September. Its smaller Luna model moved from $1 and $6 to $0.10 and $0.50 per million tokens. These are prices for different model versions, not necessarily reductions to an unchanged product.
Anthropic’s Opus pricing moved from $5 input and $25 output per million tokens for Opus 5 in July to $4 and $20 for Opus 5.5, according to the source. It also reports reductions in cache-read charges on some models. Anthropic’s claims that particular models cost less on typical or agent-heavy workloads are vendor estimates; actual costs depend on how customers use the models.
Plan conditions are changing too. The source says Anthropic’s Enterprise plan requires 20 seats, a threshold that may put the plan out of reach for many small advisory firms. It also says the company introduced capped, expiring API credits for Max and Team plans. These terms matter because a per-token price or seat price alone does not show how much capacity a customer can use.
Deal Terms Are Still Partial
The available account does not provide the full contracts behind the reported offers, including how long discounts last, what usage commitments they require, or how renewal prices are set. The bank receiving 500 seats is not identified, and the source gives no full breakdown of its previous allocation or the conditions attached to the offer.
The figures for customer savings and model use also come from company executives or people cited in reporting, not a common, independently audited comparison. The source says The Information’s article is paywalled and that its account draws on the public summary and other write-ups. It is therefore not clear whether the reported offers are typical of OpenAI’s negotiations or exceptional arrangements for a small number of large buyers.
Model prices are not directly comparable when versions, performance, usage patterns, cache rates and included allowances differ. The source’s figures indicate a fast-moving market, but they do not establish that every customer can secure the same prices or achieve the same cost reductions.
Buyers Will Test the Fine Print
Companies considering a switch or renewal will need to compare written proposals against their actual workloads, including token use, seats, credits, limits and the cost of moving between models. They can also test whether newer models perform adequately for their tasks before treating a lower rate as an equivalent replacement. The source advises buyers to negotiate and retain options across vendors, rather than relying only on published prices.
Further details may emerge as customers and vendors disclose more about the reported contracts. For subscribers, the near-term issue is whether plan allowances change even when the monthly fee does not. The source material does not identify a scheduled announcement or a confirmed next milestone from either company, so the timing of any additional offers or pricing changes remains unknown.
Key Questions
Is OpenAI offering a 90% discount on its list prices?
No such list-price discount is established by the source. DataCamp CEO Jonathan Cornelissen described expected total cost savings of 80% to 90% compared with the company’s existing setup. That is different from cutting OpenAI’s published prices by the same percentage.
What deals have been reported?
The source reports an offer of more than 30% off for Replit on a contract worth more than $100 million a year, and an offer to double a U.S. bank’s ChatGPT seats to 500 at no extra charge. Full contract terms and the bank’s identity were not provided.
Are OpenAI and Anthropic’s published prices also falling?
Yes. The source reports price reductions for newer OpenAI Sol and Luna models and a lower rate for Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 than Opus 5. These comparisons involve different model versions, and customers’ actual costs depend on usage and plan terms.
Does a lower price guarantee a lower AI bill?
No. Usage limits, seat requirements, expiring credits, caching and model performance can change the total cost. Buyers need to compare offers against their own workloads and contract conditions.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
