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If you have been waiting for OpenAI’s “Orion” or a “GPT-5 preview” to arrive, you can stop refreshing the news. Orion was the internal codename for GPT-4.5, which launched in February 2025. GPT-5 followed in August 2025, and OpenAI’s current flagship is GPT-6 Astra.
That makes a lot of older “what to expect” coverage out of date. Below is a plain timeline of what Orion actually was, why the name caused so much confusion, what came after it and what is still unconfirmed. Information was checked on October 26, 2026. Model names, prices and availability change often, so check OpenAI’s own pages before you buy or build anything.
The Quick Answer
Orion is not an upcoming model. It was the codename for GPT-4.5, which OpenAI released on February 27, 2025, as a research preview.
GPT-5 is also out. It launched in August 2025, and OpenAI has since moved through GPT-5.5, the GPT-5.6 family and now GPT-6.
If you are looking for OpenAI’s newest frontier model today, start with GPT-6 Astra and its smaller siblings, not Orion.
Why “Orion” Confused So Many People
For a long stretch, the tech press treated Orion as the codename for GPT-5. A Wall Street Journal report, summarized by PYMNTS, described the project as over budget and behind schedule. In October 2024, TechCrunch reported that OpenAI would not release a model called Orion that year.
OpenAI cleared things up in February 2025. In a post on X, Sam Altman said the company would next ship GPT-4.5, the model it had called Orion internally, as its last non-chain-of-thought model. GPT-5 would be a different thing: a system that folds in OpenAI’s reasoning technology, including o3, rather than shipping that model on its own.
In other words, the codename and the number never lined up the way the rumors suggested.
What Orion Turned Out to Be
According to TechCrunch, GPT-4.5 was OpenAI’s largest model to that point. It went first to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who paid $200 a month, and to developers on paid API tiers. ChatGPT Plus and Team customers were told to expect it the following week.
It was also costly to run. Developers paid $75 per million input tokens and $150 per million output tokens, compared with $2.50 and $10 for GPT-4o. OpenAI said it was still weighing whether to keep serving GPT-4.5 in its API over the long term.
Performance was mixed. The model beat GPT-4o on several tests and did well on factual-accuracy benchmarks, but it trailed leading reasoning models on harder math and science problems. OpenAI described it as warmer and better at picking up on intent. TechCrunch also noted that the results added to doubts about whether simply scaling up pre-training would keep delivering big jumps.
One small episode fed the debate over how to label it: hours after launch, OpenAI removed a line from the white paper saying GPT-4.5 was not a frontier model.
From GPT-5 to GPT-6
GPT-5 arrived on August 7, 2025, according to coverage of the launch event. Later releases include GPT-5.5, which OpenAI shipped on April 23, 2026, and the GPT-5.6 family, made up of Sol, Terra and Luna.
Then came GPT-6. OpenAI introduced GPT-6 Astra as its most intelligent and aligned model, with a focus on computer use, coding, cybersecurity, science and professional work. It started with a limited set of organizations, then opened to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users, the API, Microsoft Azure and AWS Bedrock. Standard API pricing is $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. The benchmark results in that announcement are OpenAI’s own, so independent testing may tell a different story.
One detail stands out: OpenAI says Astra meets the “Critical” cybersecurity threshold under its Preparedness Framework. At launch, the model refuses more advanced security tasks, such as building proof-of-concept exploits, and OpenAI plans to loosen those limits for defenders in stages.
The company has kept updating the family. Its Astra page lists GPT-6 Sol and Luna on September 22 and GPT-6.1 Sol on September 29, 2026.
What Is Still Unconfirmed
Treat with caution: A single secondary source, DutchStartup.ai, reports that GPT-6.1 Astra was cancelled after internal safety testing, that the October versions of GPT-6 Sol and Luna replaced GPT-5.6 in ChatGPT’s default experience, and that Sol and Luna cost $2/$10 and $0.10/$0.50 per million tokens. I could not confirm those details on OpenAI’s own pages.
The exact Astra launch date is also worth a caveat. Two secondary sources say September 3, 2026, but OpenAI’s announcement page, as I could read it, did not show that date directly.
So What Should You Expect Next?
OpenAI has not announced a successor to GPT-6 Astra in anything I could find, so any claim about a “GPT-7” or a specific release date is speculation. What the last two years do show is a pattern: codenames leak early, schedules slip, and a model’s public name often differs from the rumor.
For everyday readers, the practical steps are simple. Check which model your ChatGPT plan includes, read the pricing page before building on the API, and be wary of any article that still calls Orion “upcoming.”
The Bottom Line
Orion was real, but it was GPT-4.5, and it shipped in early 2025. It was big, expensive and a little underwhelming next to the reasoning models of its day, which is part of why OpenAI moved on to a combined approach with GPT-5 and then GPT-6.
If you want the current picture, look at GPT-6 Astra, its smaller siblings and OpenAI’s release notes. Everything else about the “next frontier model” is, for now, a guess.
Sources
- OpenAI: GPT-6 Astra announcement, pricing and updates
- TechCrunch: GPT-4.5 “Orion” launch, access and pricing
- Sam Altman on X: OpenAI roadmap update for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5
- PYMNTS: summary of WSJ report on Orion delays
- TechCrunch: OpenAI says it won’t release a model called Orion this year
- exchange4media: GPT-5 launch livestream coverage
- Wikipedia: GPT-5.5 release details
- DutchStartup.ai: late-September 2026 model releases (unconfirmed details flagged above)
- Photo credits: Aerps.com and Albert Stoynov, via Unsplash.
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