GPT-5.5 (High) vs GPT-5.6 Sol (Max)

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.5 (High) by OpenAI or GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-5.5 (High)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 37.00
Total cost: $3411

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Sol (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 47.00
Total cost: $3465

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) scores 10.0 points higher (47.0 vs 37.0) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($3465 vs $3411; both flagship class). Pick GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise GPT-5.5 (High).

Metric	GPT-5.5 (High)	GPT-5.6 Sol (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	37.0	47.0	+27.0% GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is 27.0% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,410.76	$3,464.84	+1.6% GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is 1.6% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	19.56s	105.07s	+437.2% GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is 437.2% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$5.00 / $30.0	$4.00 / $20.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) vs GPT-5.5 (High): 27.0% more intelligence, 1.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 437.2% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-5.5 (High): what beats it GPT-5.6 Sol (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-5.5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.

GPT-5.5 (High)GPT-5.6 Sol (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/gpt-5-5-high/gpt-5-6-sol · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-5-high/gpt-5-6-sol?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill