Compare / R1 vs GPT-5.6 Terra

R1 vs GPT-5.6 Terra

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 21 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

R1
DeepSeek · profile
GPT-5.6 Terra
OpenAI · profile
Results compared
21
Shared sources
3

R1 or GPT-5.6 Terra? The short answer

  • R1 is cheaper: $1.15 against $4.50 per million tokens, 3.9 times less.
  • GPT-5.6 Terra scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 42.1 against 11.4.
  • On our business benchmarks, GPT-5.6 Terra ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge, writing and sticking to the facts.

At a glance

R1GPT-5.6 Terra
Price per million tokens$0.70 in · $2.50 out$2.00 in · $12.00 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$1.15$4.50
Cheapest host, blended–$2.25 (OpenAI)
Intelligence Index11.442.1
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second–104
Context window64,000 tokens1,050,000 tokens
WeightsOpenClosed
Developer based inChinathe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseR1GPT-5.6 Terra
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 123 of 161 16 of 161
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects not measured 10 of 51
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 133 of 195 20 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 89 of 187 39 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 110 of 153 49 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricR1GPT-5.6 Terra
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,3881,466
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3741,428
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4021,504
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,3971,462
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,3981,465
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,3821,445
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score 24.676.7
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 11.442.1
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 70.8%92.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 8.5%42.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 39.0%71.2%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 57.7%83.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedSciCode% of problems 38.3%55.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks 19.1%88.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks 0.0%35.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 6.1%62.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ-bench banking% of tasks 6.4%40.2%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 11.4%86.3%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 18.0%22.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.300.39
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 51.860.4

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is R1 better than GPT-5.6 Terra?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, GPT-5.6 Terra ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge, writing and sticking to the facts.

Which is cheaper, R1 or GPT-5.6 Terra?

R1 costs $1.15 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $4.50 for GPT-5.6 Terra.

Run R1 and GPT-5.6 Terra on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.