OpenAI GPT-5 mini VS OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra
Decision Recommendation
⚖️ Editorial Verdict: In our analysis, GPT-5.6 Terra is the premium intelligence choice, scoring 17.7% higher on coding benchmarks. However, this accuracy premium comes with a cost overhead: GPT-5 mini is 8.2x cheaper to run. If you are building high-volume, simple chatbots or processing massive amounts of text where budget is critical, GPT-5 mini offers excellent cost savings. For agentic reasoning, code refactoring, or complex logical tasks, the accuracy premium of GPT-5.6 Terra fully justifies the cost.
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Model Specs
GPT-5 mini
Benchmarks & Scores
Coding (swe-bench-pro)
45.7%excellent at multi-file repositories, autonomous agents, and industrial codebases
Reasoning (gpqa-diamond)
81.6%graduate-level science QA
Cost & Performance
Cost (per 1M tokens)8.2x cheaper
$0.69Input: $0.25 | Output: $2.00Context Window
400k tokensModel Specs
GPT-5.6 Terra
Benchmarks & Scores
Coding (swe-bench-pro)Winner (+17.7%)
63.4%excellent at multi-file repositories, autonomous agents, and industrial codebases
Reasoning (gpqa-diamond)Winner (+11.3%)
92.9%graduate-level science QA
Cost & Performance
Cost (per 1M tokens)
$5.63Input: $2.50 | Output: $15.00Context WindowLarger
1.05M tokensFrequently Asked Questions about GPT-5 mini vs GPT-5.6 Terra comparison
GPT-5 mini is cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra. GPT-5 mini has a blended cost of $0.69/1M tokens, which is about 8.2x cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra at $5.63/1M tokens.
GPT-5.6 Terra is better for coding tasks on this benchmark. It scores 63.4% on swe-bench-pro (excellent at multi-file repositories, autonomous agents, and industrial codebases) compared to GPT-5 mini which scores 45.7%.
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