September was a much busier month for model launches and lifecycle changes, with 13 new models released and 21 models either withdrawn from provider platforms or formally retired. OpenAI and Anthropic led the release activity, introducing several new generations of models, while OpenAI and Perplexity accounted for most of the retirements and provider availability changes. Pricing movements were relatively limited, but notable: Perplexity doubled its Gemini 3.7 Flash prices before cutting GPT-5.6 Sol prices later in the month. The month also saw Perplexity discontinue access to a sizeable group of models, including eight models in a single day.
In September 2026, we recorded 2 price changes, 13 new model releases, 11 models providers stopped offering and 10 model retirements.
Price changes
- 4th Sep: Perplexity raised its price for Google's Gemini 3.7 Flash: Input $0.375 → $0.75 per 1M tokens (+100%); Output $1.875 → $3.75 per 1M tokens (+100%), and 1 other price field.
- 28th Sep: Perplexity cut its price for OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol: Input $5.00 → $4.00 per 1M tokens (−20%); Output $30.00 → $20.00 per 1M tokens (−33%), and 1 other price field.
New models
- 1st Sep: Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1.
- 1st Sep: Anthropic released Claude Mythos 5.1.
- 2nd Sep: Google released Gemini 3.8 Flash.
- 3rd Sep: OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra.
- 8th Sep: OpenAI released GPT Image 2.5 Flare.
- 8th Sep: OpenAI released GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst.
- 18th Sep: Z.ai released GLM 5.3 FlashX.
- 21st Sep: xAI released Grok-4.7.
- 22nd Sep: Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5.
- 22nd Sep: OpenAI released GPT-6 Luna.
- 22nd Sep: OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol.
- 28th Sep: Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5.
- 29th Sep: OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Sol.
No longer on a provider
- 15th Sep: Perplexity stopped offering NVIDIA's Nemotron-3.5 Lightning-30b-a3b, and no tracked provider now offers it.
- 18th Sep: Perplexity stopped offering DeepSeek's DeepSeek v4 Flash-0731, and no tracked provider now offers it.
- 18th Sep: Perplexity stopped offering Z.ai's GLM 5.2.
- 28th Sep: Perplexity stopped offering 8 models:
- OpenAI's GPT-5
- OpenAI's GPT-5 Mini
- OpenAI's GPT-5.1
- OpenAI's GPT-5.2
- OpenAI's GPT-5.4
- OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Mini
- OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Nano
- Moonshot AI's Kimi-k2.7 Code, which no tracked provider now offers
Retired
- 24th Sep: OpenAI retired Sora-2.
- 24th Sep: OpenAI retired Sora-2 Pro.
- 27th Sep: Perplexity retired Sonar, with Sonar (via Agents API) as the suggested replacement.
- 27th Sep: Perplexity retired Sonar Deep Research, with Sonar (via Agents API) as the suggested replacement.
- 27th Sep: Perplexity retired Sonar Pro, with Sonar (via Agents API) as the suggested replacement.
- 27th Sep: Perplexity retired Sonar Reasoning Pro, with Sonar (via Agents API) as the suggested replacement.
- 28th Sep: OpenAI retired Babbage-002, with GPT-5.6 Terra as the suggested replacement.
- 28th Sep: OpenAI retired Davinci-002, with GPT-5.6 Terra as the suggested replacement.
- 28th Sep: OpenAI retired GPT-3.5 Turbo 1106, with GPT-5.6 Terra as the suggested replacement.
- 28th Sep: OpenAI retired GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct, with GPT-5.6 Terra as the suggested replacement.
Track every change, as it happens
This report captures the notable changes recorded during September 2026. AI model pricing, availability and lifecycle status continue to evolve throughout the year.
Follow the changes page for ongoing updates, or visit our methodology page to understand how we collect, verify and track model pricing.