Is GPT-5.2 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats GPT-5.2 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 145 · Oct 6, 2026
As of Oct 6, 2026, GPT-5.2 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. Muse Spark 1.3 scores 77.6 higher and costs 58% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
Muse Spark 1.3 is both better and cheaper than GPT-5.2: 77.6 points higher on LMArena and 58% less per million tokens, $2.81 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1412.3
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$4.81/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1489.9
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$2.00/M
GPT-5.2 takes file, image, text, returns up to 128,000 tokens from a 400,000-token context, and is listed by 4 sellers.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 11 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. GPT-5.2 scores 1412.3 at $4.81 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Muse Spark 1.3 | 1489.9 +77.6 | $2.00/M | 58% |
| Muse Spark 1.2 | 1483.2 +70.9 | $2.00/M | 58% |
| Muse Spark 1.1 | 1479.2 +66.9 | $2.00/M | 58% |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 1466.6 +54.3 | $4.00/M | 17% |
| Grok 4.5 | 1448.1 +35.8 | $3.00/M | 38% |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | 1446.3 +34.0 | $4.50/M | 6% |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 1445.6 +33.3 | $4.00/M | 17% |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | 1442.9 +30.6 | $4.00/M | 17% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1431.0 +18.7 | $0.450/M | 91% |
| Grok 4.6 | 1427.4 +15.1 | $3.00/M | 38% |
| GPT-5.1 | 1422.2 +9.9 | $3.44/M | 29% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | 1497.0 | $3.00/M | max output |
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1491.0 | $0.540/M | file |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash | 1487.0 | $3.00/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | 1480.2 | $4.50/M | max output |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | 1479.5 | $1.50/M | max output |
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Saved decision references
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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