GPT-5.6 Sol
OpenAI's flagship GPT-5.6 model — multimodal reasoning, agentic coding, and a 1M-token context window for frontier knowledge work.
Overview
What is GPT-5.6 Sol
GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI's flagship multimodal language model, released July 9, 2026. It supports text and image inputs, reasoning, tool use, and web search, with a 1,000K-token context window and up to 128K tokens of output. It is a proprietary, closed-weight model designed for demanding coding, agentic, and cybersecurity tasks.
Running it privately on Venice
On Venice, GPT-5.6 Sol runs under an anonymized privacy tier — your prompts are not stored, profiled, or used for training. You get the same flagship reasoning, vision, and tool-use capabilities without a Big-Tech surveillance footprint, paying only for the tokens you use.
Assessment
Strengths and limitations
- Flagship reasoning and agentic performance, including native multi-agent coordination and programmatic tool calling.
- Leads published agentic coding benchmarks and scores near the top of broad intelligence indexes.
- Multimodal with vision support, web search, structured JSON output, and a 1,000K-token context window for long documents and codebases.
- Explicit prompt caching and multiple reasoning effort levels let developers trade cost against quality per task.
- Closed and proprietary: weights are not released, so self-hosting and fine-tuning are impossible.
- Premium pricing per token compared to open-weight rivals and even some frontier competitors.
- Access was heavily restricted during early rollout behind a government-managed preview, and independent evaluators have raised reward-hacking concerns on safety benchmarks.
- Not uncensored on Venice; safety refusals and content policies from OpenAI still apply.
Capabilities
What it supports
- Tool use / function calling
- Vision (image input)
- Reasoning
- Web search
- Code-optimized
- Structured output (JSON schema)
- Audio input
- Video input
- Multiple image inputs
- Log probabilities
Specifications
Datasheet
- Maker
- OpenAI
- Released
- July 9, 2026
- Modality
- Text and image input
- Architecture
- Decoder Only
- Open weights
- No — proprietary
- Context window
- 1,000K tokens
- Max output
- 128K tokens
- Capabilities
- Vision, Function calling, Reasoning, Web search
- Privacy on Venice
- Anonymized — prompts not stored
- Available on Venice since
- Jul 2026
API
Call it from your code
Venice exposes an OpenAI-compatible API. Point your base URL at Venice and pass the model id.
curl https://api.venice.ai/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $VENICE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "openai-gpt-56-sol",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Explain quantum tunneling simply." }]
}'Pricing
What it costs on Venice
Billed per token on Venice: $6.25 per 1M input tokens and $37.50 per 1M output tokens.
New Venice accounts include a free daily allowance and 500 welcome credits — no credit card required.
Alternatives
How it compares
| Model | Context window | Open weights | Price (Venice) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 1M tokens | No | $6.25 in · $37.50 out / 1M | Agentic coding & reasoning |
| Claude Fable 5 | 1M tokens | No | $12 in · $60 out / 1M | Maximum intelligence score |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | 1M tokens | No | $6 in · $30 out / 1M | Balanced frontier performance |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 160K tokens | Yes | $0.33 in · $0.48 out / 1M | Open-weight efficiency |
Flagship tier with vision, tool use, web search, and the widest context in the family.
Use cases
What it is good for
- 01Long-horizon coding and agentic software engineering over large codebases.
- 02Complex knowledge work and analysis over very large documents (1M-token context).
- 03Cybersecurity research and red-teaming workflows with appropriate safeguards.
- 04Multi-step research with web search, tool calling, and structured output.
- 05Structured data extraction and JSON-schema generation from mixed text and image inputs.
Prompting
Getting better results
Start with your existing GPT-5.5 reasoning setting, then test one level lower — GPT-5.6 often maintains quality with fewer tokens.
Mark reusable prompt prefixes for caching to reduce costs on repeated long-context workloads.
Use programmatic tool calling for bounded, tool-heavy workflows rather than chaining manual function calls.
For agentic coding, use ultra mode when you need parallel subagents to divide independent workstreams.
Version history
Current flagship tier with multi-agent coordination and programmatic tool calling.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI's flagship multimodal language model, released July 9, 2026. It handles text and image inputs, reasoning, tool use, and web search, and is designed for demanding coding, agentic workflows, and cybersecurity tasks with a 1,000K-token context window.
On Venice, GPT-5.6 Sol is billed at $6.25 per 1 million input tokens and $37.50 per 1 million output tokens. Cached input tokens cost $0.63 per 1 million. You pay only for what you use with no subscription required.
No. GPT-5.6 Sol is a proprietary, closed-weight model from OpenAI. Its weights have not been released, so it cannot be self-hosted or fine-tuned. For an open-weight alternative on Venice, consider DeepSeek V3.2 or Kimi K2.6.
Yes. On Venice, GPT-5.6 Sol supports function calling, vision (image input), reasoning, web search, structured JSON output, and multiple image inputs. It can also use programmatic tool calling and multi-agent coordination in compatible setups.
GPT-5.6 Sol leads on agentic coding benchmarks and costs significantly less per task than Claude Fable 5 on max reasoning, while Claude Fable 5 currently scores slightly higher on some broad intelligence indexes. Choose Sol for coding agents and long-context workflows; choose Fable 5 if you need the highest raw intelligence score and budget is less critical.
GPT-5.6 Sol supports a 1,000,000-token context window on Venice, with a maximum output of 128,000 tokens per generation. This makes it suitable for very large documents, codebases, and multi-turn agentic sessions.
No. GPT-5.6 Sol is not uncensored. It runs with OpenAI's safety stack and content policies, so certain sensitive or high-risk requests may still be refused. Venice does not store your prompts, but the model's own refusals remain active.
Venice offers a free trial with credits that you can use toward any hosted model, including GPT-5.6 Sol. Heavy or sustained use requires purchasing additional credits.
OpenAI offers three tiers: Sol (flagship capability), Terra (balanced performance at lower cost), and Luna (fast, affordable, high-volume). On Venice, GPT-5.6 Sol is the flagship tier available for maximum reasoning and agentic tasks.
Run GPT-5.6 Sol privately
No prompt logging. No data used for training.