Is GPT-5.6 Terra a good deal?

Whether anything in this catalogue beats GPT-5.6 Terra 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, GPT-5.6 Terra is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GPT-5.6 Sol scores 8.9 higher and costs 11% less, with a covering envelope. 13 of 136 rated, priced standard models are undominated.

Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements

Current model

GPT-5.6 Terra

Balanced

3 tokens in per 1 out

GPT-5.6 Sol is both better and cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra: 8.9 points higher on LMArena and 11% less per million tokens, $0.50 cheaper at this mix.

GPT-5.6 Terra

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1446.2

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$4.50/M

GPT-5.6 Sol

LMArena Elo · higher is better

Scale starts at 1040 Elo

1455.1

Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better

$4.00/M

GPT-5.6 Terra 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: 1 model dominates it and gives up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. GPT-5.6 Terra scores 1446.2 at $4.50 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.

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou save
GPT-5.6 Sol1455.1 +8.9$4.00/M11%

Higher score, lower price, named losses

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

ModelLMArenaEffective $/MYou give up
Gemini 3.8 Flash1494.7$1.50/Mcontext, max output
Gemini 3.7 Flash1490.5$1.50/Mcontext, max output
Muse Spark 1.31489.7$2.00/Mcontext
Muse Spark 1.11480.2$2.00/Mcontext
Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview1480.1$4.50/Mcontext, max output
GPT-5.6 Sol1455.1 · $4.00/MGPT-5.6 Terra1446.2 · $4.50/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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Evidence & Ask