Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) 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

AnthropicClaude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 49.60
Total cost: $11161

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Terra (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 42.10
Total cost: $2501

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) scores 7.5 points higher (49.6 vs 42.1) but costs 4.5× as much to run the benchmark ($11161 vs $2501; both flagship class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) when you need intelligence above 42.1, and GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) when 42.1 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)	GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	49.6	42.1	−15.1% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 15.1% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$11,160.86	$2,500.72	−77.6% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 77.6% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	98.05s	110.99s	+13.2% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 13.2% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$2.00 / $12.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) vs Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 15.1% less intelligence, 77.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 13.2% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): what beats it GPT-5.6 Terra (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
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 Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/gpt-5-6-terra · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/gpt-5-6-terra?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill