// head_to_head
GPT-5.4 Mini 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, GPT-5.4 Mini costs less — it depends on your workload.
GPT-5.6 Terra is ahead by 11.6 points overall, and GPT-5.4 Mini lists 2.7× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 11.6 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you.
openai
GPT-5.4 Mini
- Blended / 1M
- $1.69
- Context
- 400K
- Released
- Mar 17, 2026
- Overall score
- 66.4
openai
GPT-5.6 Terra
- Blended / 1M
- $4.50
- Context
- 1.1M
- Released
- Jul 9, 2026
- Overall score
- 77.9
Specs and pricing
| Metric | GPT-5.4 Mini | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 66.4 | 77.9win |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.1871 | $0.1939 |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $1.69win | $4.50 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.750win | $2.00 |
| Output price / 1M | $4.50win | $12.00 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.075win | $0.200 |
| Context window | 400K | 1.1Mwin |
| Max output tokens | 128K | 128K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — GPT-5.4 Mini 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 | GPT-5.4 Mini | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $491.40/mo | $1310.40/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $600.00/mo | $1600.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $582.00/mo | $1552.00/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $1053.75/mo | $2810.00/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $1987.50/mo | $5300.00/mo |
Which should you pick?
Quality matters more than the bill
GPT-5.6 Terra
Highest overall LiveBench score of the two at 77.9.
The workload is coding or agentic work
GPT-5.6 Terra
Leads on agentic coding — 54.9 against 41.7.
You need to fit large documents in one call
GPT-5.6 Terra
Wider context window — 1.1M against 400K.
You are cost-constrained
GPT-5.4 Mini
Cheaper on blended list price at $1.69 per million tokens.
GPT-5.4 Mini vs GPT-5.6 Terra FAQ
Which is better, GPT-5.4 Mini or GPT-5.6 Terra?
GPT-5.6 Terra scores higher, GPT-5.4 Mini costs less — it depends on your workload. GPT-5.6 Terra is ahead by 11.6 points overall, and GPT-5.4 Mini lists 2.7× cheaper per blended million tokens. Whether 11.6 points is worth that depends on how much a wrong answer costs you.
Is GPT-5.4 Mini cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra?
GPT-5.4 Mini is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, GPT-5.4 Mini lists at $1.69 per million tokens and GPT-5.6 Terra at $4.50 — GPT-5.4 Mini is 2.7× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — GPT-5.4 Mini charges $0.750 in and $4.50 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.
GPT-5.4 Mini vs GPT-5.6 Terra: which scores higher on benchmarks?
GPT-5.4 Mini scores 66.4 and GPT-5.6 Terra scores 77.9 overall on LiveBench, the mean of its seven categories. That is a 11.6-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, GPT-5.4 Mini or GPT-5.6 Terra?
They are close. GPT-5.4 Mini costs $0.1871 per point of overall capability and GPT-5.6 Terra costs $0.1939, a difference small enough that workload shape will matter more than the rate.
Does GPT-5.4 Mini or GPT-5.6 Terra have a bigger context window?
GPT-5.6 Terra has the larger context window: 400K for GPT-5.4 Mini 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 GPT-5.4 Mini and GPT-5.6 Terra support prompt caching?
Both publish a cached-input rate: $0.075 per million for GPT-5.4 Mini and $0.200 for GPT-5.6 Terra, against full input rates of $0.750 and $2.00. On a workload with a long stable prefix — a system prompt, a tool schema, a retrieved corpus — that changes the economics more than the headline price does.
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 2026-06-25, 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.