Standard Compute
Cost per coding-agent request

Is GPT-5.4 Mini or GPT-5.6 Terra cheaper for coding agents?

For coding agents, GPT-5.6 Terra costs 3.2x as much as GPT-5.4 Mini per request ($0.072 vs $0.023 on our measured traffic), because every Terra rate is 2.7 times GPT-5.4 mini's.

List prices: OpenAI API pricing, checked 2026-10-13. Request costs: Standard Compute gateway data, 79,301 coding-agent requests from 75 users, Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026. How we compute this

Run GPT-5.6 Terra in your agent from $19/month

See plans

Cost per coding-agent request, side by side

Cost at list priceGPT-5.4 MiniGPT-5.6 Terra
Prompt under 100K tokens50% of requests, 87% of input cached$0.012$0.032
Prompt of 100K to 272K39% of requests, 88% of input cached$0.030$0.080
Prompt over 272K tokens11% of requests, 86% of input cached$0.056$0.30
Average request$0.023$0.072
100 requests$2.27$7.22
Median session16 requests; a session ends after 10 idle minutes$0.30$0.81
A month of regular usemedian of 20 users active on 5+ days$34.90$117

Each logged request priced at the vendor’s list rates for its own token counts, including cache reads and any higher rate for long prompts. Average output: 698 tokens per request. Both models are priced on the requests up to 400K tokens that fit in both context windows; band shares above describe all requests.

Benchmarks, speed and latency, side by side

Artificial AnalysisGPT-5.4 MiniGPT-5.6 Terra
Intelligence Index10 evaluations, 0 to 1002442
Terminal-Bench 4.0agentic coding in a terminal2.0%35.4%
Output speedmedian233 tokens/s135 tokens/s
Time to first answer tokenincludes thinking time2.1 min2.2 min

Source: Artificial Analysis (artificialanalysis.ai). Measured variants: GPT-5.4 mini (Xhigh), speed on OpenAI; GPT-5.6 Terra (Max), speed on OpenAI. Fetched October 13, 2026. Artificial Analysis runs Terminal-Bench 4.0 in its own setup, so its scores differ from the tbench.ai leaderboard.

What to watch for

Terra is the stronger model, so fewer retries can narrow the gap on hard tasks. GPT-5.4 mini's 400K window cannot take 3% of requests; the comparison uses requests both can take.

FAQ

Is GPT-5.4 Mini cheaper than GPT-5.6 Terra for coding agents?
Yes, at list prices. 100 average coding-agent requests cost $2.27 on GPT-5.4 Mini and $7.22 on GPT-5.6 Terra. A median 16-request session costs $0.30 vs $0.81. Measured on 79,301 real coding-agent requests (Sep 13 to Oct 12, 2026), counting only the requests up to 400K tokens that both can take.
How much does a month of GPT-5.6 Terra vs GPT-5.4 Mini cost?
For the median regular user in our data (1,478 requests in 30 days), about $117 on GPT-5.6 Terra and $34.90 on GPT-5.4 Mini at list price. Heavier users pay proportionally more.
GPT-5.4 Mini vs GPT-5.6 Terra: which is better for agents?
GPT-5.6 Terra scores higher on output quality (8.0/10 vs 5.6/10), while GPT-5.4 Mini is the cheaper option. GPT-5.4 Mini is best for short, simple calls in existing GPT-5.4 setups; GPT-5.6 Terra is best for fast mid-tier work in existing GPT-5.6 setups. Live community votes on this page show what people actually prefer.
Can I switch between GPT-5.4 Mini and GPT-5.6 Terra in the same agent?
Yes. Model-agnostic agents (Cline, Aider, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, Kilo Code, OpenCode) let you swap models per task. Many people route hard tasks to the stronger model and routine work to the cheaper one.

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality

Correctness and depth of what it produces

Agentic Ability

Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks

Speed

Tokens per second and time-to-first-token

Value for Money

How much capability you get per dollar

Reliability

Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Related comparisons

Setting it up? GPT-5.6 Terra: model ID, providers and agent config

The agent matters as much as the model. Compare AI agents →

Current Claude, GPT, Gemini and open models are included with Standard Compute

Standard Compute

Current frontier models Claude Fable 5.1 · GPT-6 Astra

More intelligence
per dollar.

Each step goes to the cheapest model that can do it, on providers we vet for price, uptime and speed, with automatic fallback when one fails.

Compliance
Keep a key, team or company on European or US providers
Privacy
We don’t train on your prompts or store them

Fixed monthly plans from $19 · cancel anytime

7-day fair refund Free trial, no card Billing by Stripe1,800+ agent users