GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) vs gpt-oss-20b (High)
Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) by OpenAI or gpt-oss-20b (High) 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 33.1 points higher (42.1 vs 9.0) but costs 87× as much to run the benchmark ($2501 vs $28.8; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.0, and gpt-oss-20b (High) when 9.0 is enough.
| Metric | GPT-5.6 Terra (Max) | gpt-oss-20b (High) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 42.1 | 9.0 | −78.6% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 78.6% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $2,500.72 | $28.81 | −98.8% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 98.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 110.99s | 14.83s | −86.6% gpt-oss-20b (High) is 86.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $12.0 | $0.05 / $0.22 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
gpt-oss-20b (High) vs GPT-5.6 Terra (Max): 78.6% less intelligence, 98.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 86.6% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- 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.
- gpt-oss-20b (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
GPT-5.6 Terra (Max)gpt-oss-20b (High)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights 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-terra/gpt-oss-20b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-6-terra/gpt-oss-20b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill