Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (High)

Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or GPT-5.6 Terra (High) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 56.00
Total cost: $7260

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Terra (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.20
Total cost: $768

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… scores 21.8 points higher (56.0 vs 34.2) but costs 9.5× as much to run the benchmark ($7260 vs $768; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallbac… when you need intelligence above 34.2, and GPT-5.6 Terra (High) when 34.2 is enough.

Metric	Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)	GPT-5.6 Terra (High)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	56.0	34.2	−38.9% GPT-5.6 Terra (High) is 38.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$7,259.50	$767.78	−89.4% GPT-5.6 Terra (High) is 89.4% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	447.79s	6.58s	−98.5% GPT-5.6 Terra (High) is 98.5% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$2.00 / $10.0	$2.00 / $12.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

GPT-5.6 Terra (High) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): 38.9% less intelligence, 89.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 98.5% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it GPT-5.6 Terra (High): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
GPT-5.6 Terra (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.

Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback)GPT-5.6 Terra (High)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

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