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GPT-5.6 Terra

Shares rank 30 of 72 language models by recommenders

People recommend Terra as a faster, cheaper model close to Sol in quality. Critics say it is hard to tell apart from Sol and weak on technical tasks.

People recommend Terra as a faster, cheaper model close to Sol in quality. Critics say it is hard to tell apart from Sol and weak on technical tasks.

56 people gave an opinion

recommend it
27
criticize it
29
approval share
48%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 5 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: not recommended
  2. December 2025: not recommended
  3. January 2026: not recommended
  4. February 2026: not recommended
  5. March 2026: not recommended
  6. April 2026: not recommended
  7. May 2026: not recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Why it doesn’t carry the badge

  • 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 0.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
  • Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Strong coding and writing results

    “GPT-5.6 Terra has been doing a significantly better job at writing concise PR bodies and commit messages”

    Comment from 30 Aug 2026 in “Claude Session URL appended to commit messages and PR descriptions by default”

    “Our custom enterprise agent is currently running on 5.6-Terra and it's already very good.”

    Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “GPT-6.1 Terra”

    “as good as Fable on DeepSWE while cheaper than Opus API pricing”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”
  • Cuts costs and response times

    “Terra if the benchmarks are as claimed is indeed a half-price GPT 5.5 at comparable performance”

    Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model”

    “has cut our cost in half by itself, as well as improved response times by 50%”

    Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper”

    “it seems to work well, and reduce costs a lot”

    Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Advancing the price-performance frontier with GPT‑5.6”
  • Better than GPT-5.5

    “Terra if the benchmarks are as claimed is indeed a half-price GPT 5.5 at comparable performance”

    Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model”

    “I too have been using 5.3 codex as a cheap-but-good model and are switching to Terra (xhigh)”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

    “Terra is better than GPT 5.5”

    Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Free GPT 5.6 Terra and Luna (2.5M/day) & 250k Sol – free experiments”
  • Faster and cheaper than Sol

    “The Terra quality is usually nearly as good as Sol, but much faster and cheaper.”

    Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6, Grok 4.5, Claude, and Muse Spark build the same 4 apps”

    “Terra has better latency and output speed than Sol”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Hard to tell from Sol

    “Trying to convince us there is a difference between GPT-6-Sol and GPT-5.6-Terra or whatnot is ludicrous to the point of being insulting”

    Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”

    “Trying to pick between "Sol" and "Terra" is like asking the average person if they want the Max or the Ultra chip.”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

    “I am sick and tired of the inconsistencies in GPT model families”

    Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”
  • Weak on technical tasks

    “Terra has not been able to do any of the technical tasks I've asked of it correctly.”

    Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813”

    “GPT-5.6 Terra actually scores worse than GPT-5.5 on many benchmarks”

    Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

    “Terra really struggles here even compare to Luna”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”
  • Expensive for its results

    “OpenAI is about to charge way more money for GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra, than if they named it GPT-5.6 and GPT-5.6-mini.”

    Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

    “OpenAI is about to charge way more money for GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra”

    Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

    “Terra is too expensive and Luna not really fit for the task.”

    Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”
  • Poor pelican drawings

    “something is wrong with Terra model series, most pelicans, except Max, looks bad”

    Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

    “the pelicans from Terra were quite weird all things considered”

    Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 is now live”

Other language models people recommend

The four most recommended other language models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

GPT-5.6 Terra compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Claude Opus3,3312,74655%134 mo156 owners—
OpenAI GPT1,20598755%136 mo47 owners—
Claude Sonnet85458659%136 mo46 owners—
DeepSeek V4 Flash82822379%81 mo24 ownersApproved
GPT-5.6 TerraThis page272948%5——
See all 72 language models, ranked

What people said

40 of the 59 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“Opus 5.5 and Chatgpt 5.6 Terra noticeably better”

RecommendsComment from 31 Oct 2026 in “Anthropic to receive high 'junk' rating from credit agencies following IPO”

“Our custom enterprise agent is currently running on 5.6-Terra and it's already very good.”

RecommendsComment from 26 Oct 2026 in “GPT-6.1 Terra”

“gpt-5.6-terra works fine.”

RecommendsComment from 29 Sep 2026 in “GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price”

“At least it's not as bad as GPT-5.6 Terra I suppose.”

CriticizesComment from 29 Sep 2026 in “GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price”

“It was basically GPT-5.6 Terra for the price of Sol.”

MixedComment from 29 Sep 2026 in “GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price”

“that was enough to derail and go creating issues with my context”

CriticizesComment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: OpenAPPA – open-source deterministic guardrails that don't break agents”

“I still wouldn't call it amazing though”

MixedComment from 23 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”

“Trying to convince us there is a difference between GPT-6-Sol and GPT-5.6-Terra or whatnot is ludicrous to the point of being insulting”

CriticizesComment from 22 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”

“I am sick and tired of the inconsistencies in GPT model families”

CriticizesComment from 22 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”

“it had better instincts to NOT do this stuff”

RecommendsComment from 22 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Sol and Luna”

“I like GPT 5.6 terra medium”

RecommendsComment from 5 Sep 2026 in “Portal by Spotify cut my Claude Code token usage by 90%”

“I barely have any errors already with 4.8 level”

RecommendsComment from 1 Sep 2026 in “Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1”

“GPT-5.6 Terra has been doing a significantly better job at writing concise PR bodies and commit messages”

RecommendsComment from 30 Aug 2026 in “Claude Session URL appended to commit messages and PR descriptions by default”

“Terra has not been able to do any of the technical tasks I've asked of it correctly.”

CriticizesComment from 12 Aug 2026 in “DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813”

“Modern LLMs still generate pelican bike SVGs with obvious errors”

CriticizesComment from 2 Aug 2026 in “Karpathy's Pelican”

“if the token efficiency is real (which i am yet to replicate for our workflows)”

MixedComment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Advancing the price-performance frontier with GPT‑5.6”

“it seems to work well, and reduce costs a lot”

RecommendsComment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Advancing the price-performance frontier with GPT‑5.6”

“This suggests a pretty serious lack of actual understanding of how a bicycle works.”

CriticizesComment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Are AI Labs Pelicanmaxxing?”

“Terra is better than GPT 5.5”

RecommendsComment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Free GPT 5.6 Terra and Luna (2.5M/day) & 250k Sol – free experiments”

“I simply cannot see a purpose for it in the current form”

CriticizesComment from 19 Jul 2026 in “OpenAI reduces Codex Model Context Size from 372k to 272k”

“It just... removed the part of the page that was slow, and made it a client side request”

CriticizesComment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol on an NP-Hard Problem: Does /goal help?”

“the pelicans from Terra were quite weird all things considered”

CriticizesComment from 17 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 is now live”

“has cut our cost in half by itself, as well as improved response times by 50%”

RecommendsComment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper”

“So it seems quite token efficient.”

RecommendsComment from 10 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6, Grok 4.5, Claude, and Muse Spark build the same 4 apps”

“The Terra quality is usually nearly as good as Sol, but much faster and cheaper.”

RecommendsComment from 10 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6, Grok 4.5, Claude, and Muse Spark build the same 4 apps”

“Terra is too expensive and Luna not really fit for the task.”

CriticizesComment from 10 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“I too have been using 5.3 codex as a cheap-but-good model and are switching to Terra (xhigh)”

RecommendsComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“Terra has better latency and output speed than Sol”

RecommendsComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“Terra really struggles here even compare to Luna”

CriticizesComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“it's playable (even though super boring since there are no enemies)”

RecommendsComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“similar to GPT-5.5 and a bit behind Sonnet 5”

MixedComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“I like Terra High the best. That pelican is utterly yoked.”

RecommendsComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“something is wrong with Terra model series, most pelicans, except Max, looks bad”

CriticizesComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“Trying to pick between "Sol" and "Terra" is like asking the average person if they want the Max or the Ultra chip.”

CriticizesComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“as good as Fable on DeepSWE while cheaper than Opus API pricing”

RecommendsComment from 9 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6”

“OpenAI is about to charge way more money for GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra, than if they named it GPT-5.6 and GPT-5.6-mini.”

CriticizesComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

“it does scale down well to Terra!”

RecommendsComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

“OpenAI is about to charge way more money for GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Terra”

CriticizesComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

“GPT-5.6 Terra actually scores worse than GPT-5.5 on many benchmarks”

CriticizesComment from 8 Jul 2026 in “GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly this Thursday”

“Terra if the benchmarks are as claimed is indeed a half-price GPT 5.5 at comparable performance”

RecommendsComment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.