Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)
Which is better for the money: Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) by Google or GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-11-04.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) scores 21.9 points higher (54.2 vs 32.3) but costs 1.8× as much to run the benchmark ($5725 vs $3250; both flagship class). Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GPT-5.6 Terra (Max).
| Metric | Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) | GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 54.2 | 32.3 | −40.4% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 40.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $5,725.02 | $3,250.14 | −43.2% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 43.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.18s | 181.71s | +1685.0% GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is 1685.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $2.00 / $12.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Speech, Video | Text, Image |
GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) vs Gemini 4 Carbon (Low): 40.4% less intelligence, 43.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 1685.0% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Gemini 4 Carbon (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 57.40 for $4766.
- GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (High) scores 54.80 for $3204.
Gemini 4 Carbon (Low)GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)Today's Pareto frontierEvery other model
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon-low/gpt-5-6-terra · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gemini-4-carbon-low/gpt-5-6-terra?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill