Is GPT-5.6 Luna a good deal?

Whether anything in this catalogue beats GPT-5.6 Luna on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.

13 undominated of 136 · Sep 23, 2026

As of Sep 23, 2026, GLM 5.3 Flash scores higher and costs less than GPT-5.6 Luna for Balanced on LMArena, but it is not a drop-in. You would give up: file.

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Current model

GPT-5.6 Luna

Balanced

3 tokens in per 1 out

GLM 5.3 Flash scores 42.0 points higher and costs 47% less, but you would give up: file.

GPT-5.6 Luna

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1429.9

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.450/M

GLM 5.3 Flash

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1471.9

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$0.237/M

GPT-5.6 Luna takes file, image, text, returns up to 128,000 tokens from a 1,050,000-token context, and is listed by 7 sellers.

Compared against 136 rated, priced models on this lens: nothing dominates it outright, 5 more dominate it but give something up. GPT-5.6 Luna scores 1429.9 at $0.45 per million tokens for this mix.

Higher score, lower price, named losses

Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou give up
GLM 5.3 Flash1471.9$0.237/Mfile
Gemma 4 31B1441.7$0.153/Mcontext, max output, file
Hy31440.6$0.144/Mcontext, file, image
Gemma 4 26B A4B 1434.5$0.143/Mcontext, file
DeepSeek V4 Flash 04231431.8$0.103/Mcontext, file, image
GPT-5.6 Luna1429.9 · $0.450/MLMArena EloEffective $/M · Balanced
136 rated, priced standard models. Chartreuse is the frontier. Cobalt is the model you named, when it is not on the staircase.

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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.

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