devs are paying double for the old GPT - i tested if they're right | LAB 0024

devs are paying double for the old GPT on the API - GPT-5.6 Sol costs $4 in / $20 out per million tokens, GPT-6.1 Sol $2 / $10 - and swearing it's better than the new one. so i ran both on three of my real jobs (a broken test in Threadify, a video pipeline bug and my landing page copy), two runs each, with a blind judge from a different AI that only saw A and B. also this week: GPT-6 Pro running agents in parallel, Claude writing 90% of Claude Code, X paying creators to post video, Claude Code answering sooner, and moving your AI memory into Grok Bot. the practical: run your own model bake-off on your own work. give the prompt below to your agent. my recording cut out before i read it on camera, so here it is in full: I want to know which AI model is actually better for MY work - not on benchmarks. Run a blind bake-off. The job: [paste one real task from your week - a bug, a failing test, a page of copy] Model A: gpt-5.6-sol Model B: gpt-6.1-sol (swap in any two models your CLI can run) Prices per million tokens (OpenAI pricing page, 17 Oct 2026): gpt-5.6-sol $4 in / $0.40 cached / $20 out; gpt-6.1-sol $2 in / $0.10 cached / $10 out. 1. Make two clean copies of this project in a temp folder. Never touch my real folder. 2. Run the job once in each copy with the same prompt and the same effort setting: codex exec -m [model] -c model_reasoning_effort=medium --json "[the job]" Time each run and save its token usage. 3. Run my tests in both copies and note what passed. 4. Hide the model names. Label the two results A and B in a random order. Ask a different AI to judge them (for example: claude -p) - give it only the job, the two diffs and the test results, and ask for a 0-100 score and one sentence why for each. 5. Show me one table: tests passed, judge score, minutes, and cost at today's API prices. Then tell me which model to use for this kind of job - and say plainly if it's too close to call. Drafts only: don't push, merge or publish anything. chapters 0:00 devs pay double for the old GPT 0:11 my blind bake-off: 3 real jobs, 2 models 0:34 why devs went back to the 2x model 1:38 this is the LAB 1:54 stop reading benchmarks 2:13 GPT-6 Pro runs agents in parallel 4:21 Claude writes 90% of Claude Code 6:38 sponsor: Threadify 7:53 X pays creators to post video 9:22 more Codex usage, but no number 10:02 Claude Code answers sooner 10:54 move your AI memory into Grok Bot 11:55 run your own model bake-off 12:42 who won: old GPT vs new GPT 13:44 the prompt (full text below) thanks to today's sponsor, my software Threadify - your lead generation agent: https://www.threadify.app/home?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=lab-0024&utm_content=sponsor want to sponsor a future episode? [e-mail] watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/eIGJmUUqUr8

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