GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) vs GPT-6 Luna (Max)

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) by OpenAI or GPT-6 Luna (Max) by OpenAI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Sol (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 47.00
Total cost: $3465

OpenAIGPT-6 Luna (Max)On the frontier

Intelligence: 38.10
Total cost: $122

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) scores 8.9 points higher (47.0 vs 38.1) but costs 28× as much to run the benchmark ($3465 vs $122; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.6 Sol (Max) when you need intelligence above 38.1, and GPT-6 Luna (Max) when 38.1 is enough.

Metric	GPT-5.6 Sol (Max)	GPT-6 Luna (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	47.0	38.1	−18.9% GPT-6 Luna (Max) is 18.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,464.84	$122.05	−96.5% GPT-6 Luna (Max) is 96.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	105.13s	84.46s	−19.7% GPT-6 Luna (Max) is 19.7% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$4.00 / $20.0	$0.10 / $0.50
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

GPT-6 Luna (Max) vs GPT-5.6 Sol (Max): 18.9% less intelligence, 96.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 19.7% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-5.6 Sol (Max): what beats it GPT-6 Luna (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

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-6 Luna (Max) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.

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