A report that OpenAI is offering discounts of "up to 90%" to win Anthropic's biggest customers has set the AI industry talking. The reality is more nuanced than the headline, and that nuance is exactly what developers and businesses should understand before reacting.
What was reported
The story comes from The Information, as relayed by The Decoder on 25 October 2026. It names several companies shifting spending toward OpenAI:
- Rippling: CEO Parker Conrad said OpenAI's share of the company's coding workload rose from 16% to 52%, while Anthropic's fell from 57% to 18%.
- Replit: reportedly moved most of its AI spending after OpenAI offered more than 30% off a contract worth over $100 million a year. The reporting says Anthropic had declined to extend an earlier discount without a larger spending commitment.
- DataCamp: CEO Jonathan Cornelissen said OpenAI's pricing cut his costs by 80 to 90 percent.
- A US bank: reportedly had its ChatGPT seats doubled to 500 at no extra charge, paying under $7 per user rather than $20 or more.
What "up to 90%" actually means
The 90% figure is one customer's reported cost reduction, not a published price cut or a standard discount. Analysts who examined the claim note it can combine switching to a cheaper model tier, contract discounts, bundled seats and workload changes. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic has confirmed the figures, and the original reporting rests on a small number of sources. Replit's CEO has since clarified that the company remains model-agnostic, that Anthropic's models are still available to its users, and that OpenAI is the preferred partner for Replit Agent.
So the accurate reading is that competition for large enterprise contracts has intensified, not that every customer can get 90% off.
Prices are falling across the board
The reports land amid a broader slide in prices. OpenAI's new GPT-6.1 Terra launched on 26 October at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, which OpenAI says is half the price of GPT-6.1 Sol. One analysis of the period from June to October argues flagship API prices from both OpenAI and Anthropic have fallen by as much as 80%, with open-weight competition from Chinese labs such as DeepSeek a leading explanation. That analysis is a third-party compilation rather than an official price history, so treat the exact percentages with care.
Why it matters
For developers and startups, including those in Africa where API costs weigh heavily, falling prices and aggressive negotiation mean it is worth re-testing your provider every few months. Switching costs for many applications are low, and a cheaper model that is good enough can change the economics of a product.
For the labs, the story is about margins. The Information framed Anthropic's margin as OpenAI's opportunity. Both companies are reported to be preparing for public listings, which raises the stakes on every high-profile customer. OpenAI may be trading its own margins for market share, and promotional terms may not last.
Sources: The Decoder, citing The Information; TechCrunch interview with Replit CEO Amjad Masad as reported by AI Weekly; MLQ; OpenAI.
