Quiet Week

Week 32 Briefing: AI Pricing Updates: August 3 - August 9, 2026

No pure dollar price change was verified during Week 32. Anthropic retired Opus 4.1 from its first-party API with a cheaper replacement, while OpenAI expanded included ChatGPT access at no added cost.

Your Wallet This Week
Price Change Summary
Swipe horizontally to compare every column.
Tool What Changed Was Now Impact Who It Affects
Anthropic Opus 4.1First-party API model retired, Opus 4.8 replaces it$15 / $75$5 / $25Lower costAnthropic first-party API users
OpenAI ChatGPTIncluded access expandedExisting plans$0 changeNeutralFree, Go, Plus, Pro subscribers
Week 31: OpenAI API cuts, Grok Voice +60%, Kimi K3 open-source · Week 30: Opus 5, Copilot Credits, Claude Max shifts · Week 29: DeepSeek V4 Pro, Kimi K3 pricing

Anthropic Retires Opus 4.1 API: Opus 4.8 Is 67% Cheaper

On August 5, 2026, Anthropic retired claude-opus-4-1-20250805 from its first-party API, following through on a deprecation announced June 5. The officially recommended replacement is claude-opus-4-8, which carries dramatically lower list rates.

Opus 4.1 was priced at $15.00 per million base input tokens and $75.00 per million output tokens. Opus 4.8 is $5.00 input and $25.00 output. Both list rates are 67% lower than the retired model's pricing.

Concrete math for a typical workload with 1 million input tokens and 1 million output tokens: $90.00 on Opus 4.1 becomes $30.00 on Opus 4.8, a savings of $60.00 per equivalent call. This is a forced migration, not a voluntary list-price cut: developers still pinned to the opus-4-1 alias will need to update their model string.

Opus 4.1 remains available on Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud according to Anthropic's pricing table. The retirement applies only to Anthropic's first-party API.

Who This Affects
Every developer using the opus-4-1 model alias on Anthropic's first-party API. If you have not migrated to opus-4-8, update the model identifier before your next production request. The replacement model is 67% cheaper at list rates, so migration reduces your bill. Bedrock and Google Cloud users are unaffected: Opus 4.1 remains available on those platforms.

Verified against Anthropic's official model deprecations and API pricing documentation.

OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Plans at Zero Added Cost

On August 6, 2026, OpenAI announced a plan-content expansion for Free, Go, Plus, and Pro users. GPT-5.6 Luna becomes the default model for Free and Go users starting during Week 32. Beginning the following week, Free and Go users gain unlimited text chats and a Think button for harder questions, subject to abuse guardrails. Limits still apply to file uploads, images, and other tools.

Plus and Pro subscribers receive an updated GPT-5.6 Sol with a new slider controlling thought effort, giving users direct control over the depth-versus-speed tradeoff.

No subscription price changed in this announcement. This is a plan-content expansion at zero additional announced cost: users get more capability within their existing plans. The announcement changes included access, not subscription prices.

Who This Affects
Free, Go, Plus, and Pro ChatGPT users. Free and Go users get a meaningful upgrade with Luna as the default and unlimited text chats. Plus and Pro users gain finer control over Sol's reasoning depth. No subscription price changed: your bill stays the same while the included capability expands. Compare the expanded included access before changing plans.

Verified against OpenAI's official August 6 ChatGPT product announcement.

Near-misses checked and excluded

These items were reviewed during Week 32 but did not qualify as in-window pricing changes. They are listed here so readers know what was evaluated.

  • OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna 80% and Terra 20% API cuts: Effective July 30, outside the Week 32 window (covered in Week 31).
  • Anthropic fast mode long-context support: A capability expansion at the existing fast-mode multiplier, not a new rate change.
  • Anthropic Opus 5 / Sonnet 5 introductory pricing: Announced July 24. The later September 1 rate is not a Week 32 change.
  • Mistral Shieldstral: New open-weight product with no hosted API rate. A product launch, not a change to an existing price.
  • Qwen3.8-Max, Meta Muse Code, and other new product launch rate cards: Launches with their own first-time pricing, not changes to an existing price.
  • Adobe Creative Cloud promotion ending: A promotional period expiring, not a list-price change.
Switch Watch

Three recommendations based on this week's verified pricing developments.

Opportunity

Anthropic API Users: Move Off Opus 4.1

Update first-party API model strings to Opus 4.8. A 1M input plus 1M output workload moves from $90 to $30.

Info

Bedrock and Google Cloud Users: Check Your Platform

The retirement applied to Anthropic's first-party API. Confirm your partner-platform model availability before changing a working integration.

Info

ChatGPT Users: Test Included Access First

Free and Go gained Luna access, unlimited text chats subject to guardrails, and a Think button with no subscription price change. Test the expanded plan before paying for more.