Model comparison
Cohere Command A+ vs GPT-5.6 Terra
Cohere against OpenAI, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 4, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
Cohere
Cohere Command A+
Balanced · Open weights
OpenAI
GPT-5.6 Terra
Balanced
| Specification | Cohere Command A+ | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | OpenAI |
| Tier | Balanced | Balanced |
| Context window | 128K | Winner: 1.05M |
| Max output | Not verifiedUnverified | 128K |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.80 | $2 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $3.20 | $12 |
| Weights | Open | Closed |
| Parameters | 218B total / 25B active (sparse MoE) | mid-tier reasoning model |
| Reasoning levels | low, medium, high | none, low, medium, high, xhigh, max |
| Modalities | text | text, image |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Not disclosedUnverified |
| API model id | CohereLabs/command-a-plus-05-2026 | gpt-5.6-terra |
| Released | May 20, 2026 | July 9, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | 43 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [high] (2026-08-14) | Not verifiedUnverified | 50 |
| SWE-bench Verified (2026-09-01) | Not verifiedUnverified | 95.4 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-07-09) | Not verifiedUnverified | 87.4 |
| LiveBench (2026-09-05) | Not verifiedUnverified | 77.9 |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-09-05: LiveBench official leaderboard (benchmark-owned), max effortContamination-resistant general capability across reasoning, coding, math, data analysis, and language, with monthly question refreshes. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Rolling question set: observations months apart measure different question mixes. Record the measurement date and compare within ~1 month windows.
- 2026-09-01: vals.ai SWE-bench Verified leaderboard (independent, mini-swe-agent bash-only) (independent; official SWE-bench not published)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
- 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2026-07-09: OpenAI GPT-5.6 announcement (vendor; chart transcribed by Vellum)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Pricing tiers: Cohere Command A+: Azure-hosted Global rate $0.80/$3.20 per MTok (effective 2026-07-01; Data Zone $0.88/$3.52). Cohere-direct publishes no per-token price: open weights (Apache 2.0), a free rate-limited trial API, and Model Vault/enterprise licensing. Cohere calls it the last model in the Command A family. 218B/25B active sparse MoE. · GPT-5.6 Terra: Launch list was $2.50/$15; cut to $2/$12 on 2026-07-30. Cached input $0.20/MTok; batch $1/$6.
Cohere Command A+
Command A+ is Cohere's open-weight (Apache 2.0) 218B/25B sparse MoE for enterprise use.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Enterprise RAG
- Tool use
Watch out
The $0.80/$3.20 figure is the Azure-hosted rate, not a Cohere-direct price — Cohere itself sells licenses and a free rate-limited trial, so budget by deployment path.
GPT-5.6 Terra
GPT-5.6 Terra delivers roughly GPT-5.5-class quality at about half the cost, with the full 1.05M-token context.
Best for
- Cost-sensitive production
- Mixed reasoning workloads
- High-volume agents
Watch out
Quality trails Sol on the hardest tasks; route frontier work to Sol when it matters.
When the cheaper one wins
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper on output at $3.20 per million tokens against $12 for GPT-5.6 Terra — about 3.8×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output.
- 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 7 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- Cohere Command A+: Azure Retail Prices API (Command A Plus Global $0.80/$3.20) (accessed 2026-09-04)
- Cohere Command A+: AzureSpeed — AI model pricing tracker (same figures) (accessed 2026-09-04)
- Cohere Command A+: Cohere — pricing (no per-token price for current Command generation) (accessed 2026-09-04)
- GPT-5.6 Terra: OpenAI — GPT-5.6 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- GPT-5.6 Terra: OpenAI API pricing (gpt-5.6-terra $2/$12) (accessed 2026-08-29)
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Diving deeper on one model? Cohere Command A+ · GPT-5.6 Terra
Common questions
Cohere Command A+ vs GPT-5.6 Terra
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is Cohere Command A+ or GPT-5.6 Terra cheaper for input?
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper at $0.80 per million input tokens, against $2 for GPT-5.6 Terra — roughly 2.5× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Cohere Command A+ has tiered pricing: Azure-hosted Global rate $0.80/$3.20 per MTok (effective 2026-07-01; Data Zone $0.88/$3.52). Cohere-direct publishes no per-token price: open weights (Apache 2.0), a free rate-limited trial API, and Model Vault/enterprise licensing. Cohere calls it the last model in the Command A family. 218B/25B active sparse MoE. GPT-5.6 Terra has tiered pricing: Launch list was $2.50/$15; cut to $2/$12 on 2026-07-30. Cached input $0.20/MTok; batch $1/$6.
Is Cohere Command A+ or GPT-5.6 Terra cheaper for output?
Cohere Command A+ is cheaper at $3.20 per million output tokens, against $12 for GPT-5.6 Terra — roughly 3.8× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Cohere Command A+ has tiered pricing: Azure-hosted Global rate $0.80/$3.20 per MTok (effective 2026-07-01; Data Zone $0.88/$3.52). Cohere-direct publishes no per-token price: open weights (Apache 2.0), a free rate-limited trial API, and Model Vault/enterprise licensing. Cohere calls it the last model in the Command A family. 218B/25B active sparse MoE. GPT-5.6 Terra has tiered pricing: Launch list was $2.50/$15; cut to $2/$12 on 2026-07-30. Cached input $0.20/MTok; batch $1/$6.
Which has the larger context window, Cohere Command A+ or GPT-5.6 Terra?
GPT-5.6 Terra accepts 1.05M tokens against 128K for Cohere Command A+. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do Cohere Command A+ and GPT-5.6 Terra support the same reasoning levels?
Cohere Command A+ exposes low, medium, high, while GPT-5.6 Terra exposes none, low, medium, high, xhigh, max.
Should I use Cohere Command A+ or GPT-5.6 Terra?
Both sit in the balanced tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Cohere Command A+ suits open-weight deployments; GPT-5.6 Terra suits cost-sensitive production.
Can I self-host Cohere Command A+ or GPT-5.6 Terra?
Cohere Command A+ publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. GPT-5.6 Terra is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: Cohere Command A+ costs $0.80 per 1M tokens versus $2 for GPT-5.6 Terra — a 2.5x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: GPT-5.6 Terra takes 1.05M against 128K for Cohere Command A+ — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: GPT-5.6 Terra leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 50 to 43 (measured 2026-08-14).
- Deployment: Cohere Command A+ publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.