OpenAI Weighs Drastic Token Price Cuts

OpenAI is internally considering a deep price cut to its token pricing—the metric AI companies use to bill customers—The Wall Street Journal reported on June 10, citing sources familiar with the matter. Because tokens form the basis of all API billing, altering these unit prices would effectively rewrite the startup's entire pricing structure.

The deliberations are based on the expectation that Anthropic will soon introduce similar price cuts. OpenAI aims to lower its rates first, securing its user base before its rival moves. However, the discussions remain fluid, and OpenAI has declined to comment.

A User War with Anthropic

This preemptive strategy reflects how intense the competition with Anthropic has become. Anthropic closed its Series H funding round on May 28 at a $965 billion valuation, edging past OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in March. It was the first time the competition between the two AI startups showed up directly in their valuations.

The price war extends to consumer subscriptions as well. ChatGPT subscriptions are structured in three tiers: $8, $20, and $100 or more per month. Anthropic counters with Claude Pro at $17 per month under an annual plan, and Claude Max starting at $100 per month. In the developer market, the competition is just as direct: OpenAI's Codex goes head-to-head with Anthropic's Claude Code.

In terms of scale, OpenAI remains far ahead. ChatGPT surpassed 1 billion monthly app users in May. However, the tension highlighted by the reports reveals a deeper issue: user scale does not automatically translate into revenue — which is why a price cut is on the table at all.

Token Prices Already Collapsing

The root of this tension extends beyond OpenAI: token prices are collapsing across the industry. When benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis ran ten identical evaluations across major models, the total cost reached $4,811 for Claude and $3,357 for ChatGPT. In contrast, China's Zhipu GLM completed the same workload for just $544.

Developer migration is already visible in industry data. On OpenRouter, a model-routing marketplace, the usage share of Chinese models surged from approximately 1% in 2024 to over 60% this May, a shift primarily driven by DeepSeek's low-cost offensive, an early front in the price war that is now redrawing the market.

Google has also joined the AI price war. At the I/O conference in May, CEO Sundar Pichai noted that many companies had already exhausted their annual token budgets, pitching the lower-cost Gemini 3.5 Flash as a solution. While OpenAI's current GPT-5.5 API charges $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens, the AI price war has reached a point where such rates are increasingly difficult to maintain.

Squeezing Margins Ahead of an IPO

The timing of these pricing discussions is particularly notable. OpenAI submitted a confidential S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 8, just one week after Anthropic completed the same step. Both companies are moving toward public listings at valuations well exceeding $800 billion.

However, these high valuations assume that the two leading AI labs can maintain their pricing power. CNBC reported last month that cheap AI could derail both offerings. A token price cut serves as a defense against user churn, but it also squeezes the margins that public investors will closely scrutinize.

In a statement following the filing, CEO Sam Altman defined the next phase for OpenAI as making advanced AI both abundant and affordable. The price cut now under discussion may be the first step toward fulfilling that commitment — and in the AI price war, it places the next move squarely on Anthropic.