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GPT-5.6 Terra

by OpenAI · balanced everyday model · released July 9, 2026

The value pick of the GPT-5.6 family — performance competitive with GPT-5.5 at roughly half the price. Built for the majority of everyday production work.

Input $2.50 / 1M
Output $15 / 1M
Context 1M
Tier Balanced
OpenAI Platform ↗ Updated July 9, 2026
§ API pricing

Per-token rates.

Input
$2.50/1M tokens
Prompt tokens
  • Half of Sol's input rate
  • Vision inputs billed as tokens
  • Cache reads get ~90% discount
Output
$15/1M tokens
Completion tokens
  • Matches GPT-5.4 exactly
  • Includes reasoning tokens
  • Half of Sol's output rate
Context
1Mtokens
Window
  • Large window for repo-scale work
  • Official figure not published
  • Shares the GPT-5.6 architecture
Caching
1.25×on cache writes
Prompt caching
  • Explicit cache breakpoints
  • 30-minute minimum cache life
  • Cache reads keep the 90% discount

Terra lands at $2.50 / 1M input and $15 / 1M output — the same rate as the GPT-5.4 it replaces, and roughly 2× cheaper than Sol for competitive everyday quality.

What's new in GPT-5.6 Terra

Terra is the middle child of the GPT-5.6 family — the model OpenAI expects most developers to reach for day to day. Released publicly on July 9, 2026 alongside Sol and Luna, it holds the $2.50 / $15 per-1M rate of the GPT-5.4 model it replaces while matching much of GPT-5.5's quality at roughly half the cost.

Terra doesn't ship the max/ultra reasoning modes that make Sol distinctive; instead it targets the sweet spot of price and capability for high-volume production work. For teams migrating off GPT-5.5, it's the natural default — similar output quality, meaningfully lower spend.

Capabilities

Terra is a strong generalist: writing, code, vision, structured extraction, and reliable tool use across multi-turn loops. It gives up the deepest reasoning on the hardest problems (where Sol's Ultra mode earns its cost) but handles the vast majority of everyday tasks without the flagship price tag. The large context window keeps it viable for document Q&A and repo-scale coding.

Typical use cases

  • Production chat assistants and support agents
  • Everyday code generation, review, and IDE integrations
  • High-volume workloads where cost matters
  • Document Q&A and summarization over long inputs
  • Structured extraction and form filling

Sibling and rival comparison

ModelInput / 1MOutput / 1MContext
GPT-5.6 Terra$2.50$151M
GPT-5.6 Sol$5$301M
GPT-5.6 Luna$1$61M
Claude Sonnet 5$3$151M
Gemini 3.1 Pro$2$121M

Terra's closest rivals are Claude Sonnet 5 (equal on output, slightly higher on input) and Gemini 3.1 Pro (cheaper, with a per-request tier surcharge above 200K tokens). Against its own family, it's the value option below Sol and above Luna.

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