Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) 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 7.6 points higher (42.1 vs 34.5) but costs 44× as much to run the benchmark ($2501 vs $56.4; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) when you need intelligence above 34.5, and Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) when 34.5 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 42.1 | +22.0% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 22.0% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $2,500.72 | +4337.0% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 44× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.74s | 113.99s | +673.3% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 673.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $2.00 / $12.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 22.0% more intelligence, 4337.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 673.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- 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 Haiku 5.5 (Medium)GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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