GPT-5.6 Terra vs Claude Haiku 4.5
OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Terra and Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 both target production language workloads, but they price and behave differently. Here is the side-by-side.
Pricing checked against provider documentation on . How we verify
The short answer
Claude Haiku 4.5 is the cheaper option — roughly 2.3x less on a blended workload, and it suits lowest-latency claude responses. GPT-5.6 Terra justifies its premium when you need balanced production workloads.
OpenAI • GPT-5.6
$2.00 / $12.00
/ 1M tokens (input / output)
The everyday tier of the GPT-5.6 family, roughly corresponding to the old 'mini' slot but benchmarking above the previous generation's flagship. For most application backends this is the default worth trying before reaching for Sol, since it clears Claude Fable 5 on several evals at a fraction of the cost.
Anthropic • Claude 4.5
$1.00 / $5.00
/ 1M tokens (input / output)
The fastest model Anthropic ships, still on the Claude 4.5 generation with a 200K window and an early-2025 knowledge cutoff. Worth it when response latency is the product requirement; otherwise Sonnet 5 offers more capability and five times the context for twice the price.
Input price
Claude Haiku 4.5 is 50% cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra on input tokens.
Output price
Claude Haiku 4.5 is 58% cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra on output tokens — usually the side that dominates the bill.
Monthly cost at three workload sizes
Standard (non-batch, non-cached) rates. Reasoning models will exceed these figures because thinking tokens bill as output.
| Workload | GPT-5.6 Terra | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light — 1M in / 200K out | $4 | $2 | $2 |
| Moderate — 10M in / 2M out | $44 | $20 | $24 |
| Heavy — 100M in / 20M out | $440 | $200 | $240 |
Specification comparison
| Attribute | GPT-5.6 Terra | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input (/ 1M tokens) | $2.00 | $1.00 |
| Output (/ 1M tokens) | $12.00 | $5.00 |
| Cached input | $0.20 | $0.10 |
| Context window | 1,048,576 tokens | 200,000 tokens |
| Max output | 128,000 tokens | 64,000 tokens |
| Native reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2026-02 | 2025-02 |
| Relative latency | medium | low |
| Open weights | No | No |
| API model ID | gpt-5.6-terra | claude-haiku-4-5 |
| Status | stable | stable |
GPT-5.6 Terra: Cut 20% from the $2.50/$15 launch price on 2026-07-30.
Choose GPT-5.6 Terra if…
- Customer support and chat backends
- RAG and document processing pipelines
- Mid-complexity coding tasks
- Tool-calling agents at scale
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if…
- Real-time chat suggestions
- Lightweight extraction and tagging
- Guardrail and routing calls
- High-frequency background jobs
Frequently asked
Is GPT-5.6 Terra or Claude Haiku 4.5 cheaper?
Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper. On a blended 3:1 input-to-output workload it costs about 2.3x less than GPT-5.6 Terra.
Which has the larger context window, GPT-5.6 Terra or Claude Haiku 4.5?
GPT-5.6 Terra has the larger window at 1.05M tokens versus 200K.
Should I use GPT-5.6 Terra or Claude Haiku 4.5?
Pick GPT-5.6 Terra for balanced production workloads. Pick Claude Haiku 4.5 for lowest-latency claude responses. If cost dominates the decision, Claude Haiku 4.5 wins; if you need the capability ceiling, benchmark both on your own evals before committing.