Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) scores 21.4 points higher (42.1 vs 20.7) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($2501 vs $1501; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning).
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 42.1 | +103.4% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 2.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $2,500.72 | +66.6% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 66.6% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.00s | 107.91s | +413.9% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 413.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $2.00 / $12.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 103.4% more intelligence, 66.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 413.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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