Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-5.6 Terra

GPT-5.6 Terra comes out ahead on 11 of 14 shared measures, and the two rank 28 and 37 of 51 overall. Claude Sonnet 5 is 1.1× cheaper per million tokens (blended) — A$9.83 vs A$10.67 per 1,000 replies of customer support replys.

CLAUDE SONNET 5 #37GPT-5.6 TERRA #28UPDATED 23 SEP 2026
§ 01 — AT A GLANCE

Where each one wins.

Overall

GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 28th of 51; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks 37th.

Coding

GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 14th of 42; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks 22nd.

Agents

GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 16th of 41; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks 19th.

Reasoning

GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 18th of 51; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks 27th.

Long context

GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 12th of 51; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks 14th.

Value

GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 26th of 50; Claude Sonnet 5 ranks 33rd.

Price

Claude Sonnet 5 is 1.1× cheaper per million tokens (blended) — A$9.83 vs A$10.67 per 1,000 replies of customer support replys.

Speed

GPT-5.6 Terra writes 1.3× faster (92 tok/s vs 73 tok/s).

Australia

Both can be used from Australia through their makers’ own APIs (Anthropic and OpenAI), which may process requests outside Australia. Claude Sonnet 5 can run with requests kept in Australia on AWS Bedrock in Melbourne. GPT-5.6 Terra can be called from AWS Bedrock in Sydney and Melbourne and Microsoft Azure in Australia East, but only through global routing, so requests may be processed outside Australia.

§ 02 — EVERY MEASURE

Side by side.

“Level” means the gap is inside LMArena’s confidence interval, or the scores are identical. Independent test scores are for each model’s headline setting. Both models can be used from Australia through their makers’ APIs; the Australian rows show whether requests can also be processed in Australia.

BENCHMARKS, SPEED AND AVAILABILITY23 SEP 2026
Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-5.6 Terra: benchmark results
BENCHMARKCLAUDE SONNET 5GPT-5.6 TERRALEADS
AA Intelligence Index38.242.1GPT-5.6 Terra
AA Coding Index71.576.7GPT-5.6 Terra
GPQA Diamond91.1%92.5%GPT-5.6 Terra
Humanity’s Last Exam41.3%42.9%GPT-5.6 Terra
AA-LCR82.0%83.0%GPT-5.6 Terra
Terminal-Bench 2.180.5%88.0%GPT-5.6 Terra
τ²-Bench (banking)37.3%40.2%GPT-5.6 Terra
SciCode54.3%55.0%GPT-5.6 Terra
LMArena Text14611466Level
LMArena WebDev15381518Claude Sonnet 5
LMArena Vision12661267Level
LMArena Document14761477Level
LMArena Search1196
LMArena Agent#9#23Claude Sonnet 5
Blended price (AUD)A$5.62A$6.32Claude Sonnet 5
Output speed73 tok/s92 tok/sGPT-5.6 Terra
Answer starts after1.4 min2.9 minClaude Sonnet 5
Context window1,000,000 tokens1,050,000 tokensGPT-5.6 Terra
USE FROM AUSTRALIA
Maker’s APIYESYES
Processed in AustraliaYES · CLOUDNO
AUSTRALIAN CLOUD REGIONS
AWS Bedrock · SydneyGLOBALGLOBAL
AWS Bedrock · MelbourneIN REGIONGLOBAL
Azure · Australia EastNOT IN AUGLOBAL
Google Vertex AI · SydneyGLOBALNOT OFFERED
§ 03 — COST

The same jobs, in Australian dollars.

List prices at the snapshot’s RBA rate, excluding GST and reasoning tokens.

EVERYDAY JOBSESTIMATES
Estimated cost of common jobs in Australian dollars
JOBCLAUDE SONNET 5GPT-5.6 TERRAMEDIAN MODEL
Customer support replyPER 1,000 REPLIESA$9.83A$10.67A$6.58
Summarise a 30-page documentPER 100 DOCUMENTSA$6.74A$6.96A$4.74
Agentic coding taskPER 10 TASKSA$5.33A$5.56A$3.72
§ 05 — QUESTIONS

Claude Sonnet 5 or GPT-5.6 Terra?

On our overall leaderboard GPT-5.6 Terra ranks 28th and Claude Sonnet 5 37th of 51. Which is better depends on the job: the table above compares each benchmark, price and Australian availability.

Claude Sonnet 5, at A$5.62 per million tokens (blended) against A$6.32 for GPT-5.6 Terra. Reasoning-heavy settings add output tokens, so real bills depend on the effort level you run.

Both can be used from Australia through their makers’ own APIs (Anthropic and OpenAI), which may process requests outside Australia. Claude Sonnet 5 can run with requests kept in Australia on AWS Bedrock in Melbourne. GPT-5.6 Terra can be called from AWS Bedrock in Sydney and Melbourne and Microsoft Azure in Australia East, but only through global routing, so requests may be processed outside Australia.

PUT THE COMPARISON TO WORK

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