// head_to_head
Gemma 4 31B vs GPT-5.6 Terra
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
GPT-5.6 Terra scores higher, Gemma 4 31B costs less — it depends on your workload.
GPT-5.6 Terra is ahead by 29.1 points overall, and Gemma 4 31B lists 18× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 29.1 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you. Gemma 4 31B also leads on measured cost per point of capability, at $0.0017 per point.
Gemma 4 31B
- Blended / 1M
- $0.250
- Context
- 262K
- Released
- Apr 2, 2026
- Overall score
- 38.7
openai
GPT-5.6 Terra
- Blended / 1M
- $4.50
- Context
- 1.1M
- Released
- Jul 9, 2026
- Overall score
- 67.8
Specs and pricing
| Metric | Gemma 4 31B | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Weighted mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 38.7 | 67.8win |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0017win | $0.0196 |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.250win | $4.50 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.200win | $2.00 |
| Output price / 1M | $0.400win | $12.00 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | — | $0.200 |
| Context window | 262K | 1.1Mwin |
| Max output tokens | 16K | 128Kwin |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — Gemma 4 31B on top, GPT-5.6 Terra below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | Gemma 4 31B | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $80.00/mo | $1,310/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $184.00/mo | $1,600/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $192.00/mo | $1,552/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $230.00/mo | $2,810/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $540.00/mo | $5,300/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are running this at volume
Gemma 4 31B
Lowest measured cost per point of capability at $0.0017 per point — the gap compounds with every request.
Quality matters more than the bill
GPT-5.6 Terra
Highest overall LiveBench score of the two at 67.8.
The workload is coding or agentic work
GPT-5.6 Terra
Leads on long-horizon agentic — 33.1 against 10.7.
You need to fit large documents in one call
GPT-5.6 Terra
Wider context window — 1.1M against 262K.
Gemma 4 31B vs GPT-5.6 Terra FAQ
Which is better, Gemma 4 31B or GPT-5.6 Terra?
GPT-5.6 Terra scores higher, Gemma 4 31B costs less — it depends on your workload. GPT-5.6 Terra is ahead by 29.1 points overall, and Gemma 4 31B lists 18× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 29.1 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you. Gemma 4 31B also leads on measured cost per point of capability, at $0.0017 per point.
Is Gemma 4 31B cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra?
Gemma 4 31B is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, Gemma 4 31B lists at $0.250 per million tokens and GPT-5.6 Terra at $4.50 — Gemma 4 31B is 18× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — Gemma 4 31B charges $0.200 in and $0.400 out, GPT-5.6 Terra charges $2.00 and $12.00 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Gemma 4 31B vs GPT-5.6 Terra: which scores higher on benchmarks?
Gemma 4 31B scores 38.7 and GPT-5.6 Terra scores 67.8 overall on LiveBench, the weighted mean of its seven categories. That is a 29.1-point lead for GPT-5.6 Terra. Category scores differ from the overall figure — a model can lead on reasoning and trail on coding, which the per-category table above breaks out.
Which gives better value for money, Gemma 4 31B or GPT-5.6 Terra?
Gemma 4 31B. Cost per point divides the measured dollars LiveBench spent running the benchmark by the score it earned, so it captures something token pricing misses: a reasoning model can emit many times more tokens than its per-token rate suggests. Gemma 4 31B works out at $0.0017 per point and GPT-5.6 Terra at $0.0196.
Does Gemma 4 31B or GPT-5.6 Terra have a bigger context window?
GPT-5.6 Terra has the larger context window: 262K for Gemma 4 31B against 1.1M for GPT-5.6 Terra. Note that a window you can fill is not a window you should fill — retrieval quality usually degrades well before the limit, and you pay for every token you put in it.
Do Gemma 4 31B and GPT-5.6 Terra support prompt caching?
GPT-5.6 Terra publishes a cached-input rate of $0.200 per million tokens against a full input rate of $2.00. The catalogue lists no separate cached rate for Gemma 4 31B, which means the provider does not price it separately here — not that caching is unavailable.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.