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AI Choice Engine

Model comparison

GPT-5.6 Terra vs Qwen3-235B-A22B

OpenAI against Qwen, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 26, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

OpenAI

GPT-5.6 Terra

Balanced

vs

Qwen

Qwen3-235B-A22B

Balanced · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationGPT-5.6 TerraQwen3-235B-A22B
ProviderOpenAIQwen
TierBalancedBalanced
Context windowWinner: 1.05M128K
Max outputWinner: 128K33K
Input / 1M tokens$2Winner: $0.70
Output / 1M tokens$12Winner: $2.80
WeightsClosedOpen
Parametersmid-tier reasoning model235B total / 22B active (MoE)
Reasoning levelsnone, low, medium, high, xhigh, maxlow, high, max
Modalitiestext, imagetext
LicenseNot disclosedUnverifiedApache 2.0
API model idgpt-5.6-terraqwen3-235b-a22b
ReleasedJuly 9, 2026April 29, 2025
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-09-26)42.1Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)Not verifiedUnverified9.5
SWE-bench Verified (2026-09-01)95.4Not verifiedUnverified
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-07-09)87.4Not verifiedUnverified
LiveBench (2026-09-05)77.9Not verifiedUnverified

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

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

Pricing tiers

GPT-5.6 Terra: Launch list was $2.50/$15; cut to $2/$12 on 2026-07-30. Above 272K input the whole request bills 2x input / 1.5x output. Cached input $0.20/MTok; cache writes 1.25x input; batch $1/$6.

Qwen3-235B-A22B: Model Studio International $0.70 input / $2.80 output per MTok (non-thinking); thinking-mode output $8.40. Open weights (Apache 2.0) for self-hosting; 32,768-token recommended output.

BalancedRecord checked September 26, 2026

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

GPT-6 Sol ($2/$10) now costs less than Terra ($2/$12) and scores higher — route frontier work to GPT-6 Sol. Terra has no named successor and is still served.

BalancedOpen weightsRecord checked September 26, 2026

Qwen3-235B-A22B

Qwen3-235B-A22B is Alibaba's widely deployed open-weight MoE — 235B/22B, strong price-performance.

Best for

  • Open-weight deployments
  • Self-hosting
  • Multilingual

Watch out

Needs multi-GPU for the 235B total; hosted rates vary.

When the cheaper one wins

Qwen3-235B-A22B is cheaper on output at $2.80 per million tokens against $12 for GPT-5.6 Terra — about 4.3×. 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.

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Evidence 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.
  • 5/5 core specs verified on both sides — All core specifications verified for both models.
  • 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 2 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.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? GPT-5.6 Terra · Qwen3-235B-A22B

Common questions

GPT-5.6 Terra vs Qwen3-235B-A22B

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is GPT-5.6 Terra or Qwen3-235B-A22B cheaper for input?
Qwen3-235B-A22B is cheaper at $0.70 per million input tokens, against $2 for GPT-5.6 Terra — roughly 2.9× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; GPT-5.6 Terra has tiered pricing: Launch list was $2.50/$15; cut to $2/$12 on 2026-07-30. Above 272K input the whole request bills 2x input / 1.5x output. Cached input $0.20/MTok; cache writes 1.25x input; batch $1/$6. Qwen3-235B-A22B has tiered pricing: Model Studio International $0.70 input / $2.80 output per MTok (non-thinking); thinking-mode output $8.40. Open weights (Apache 2.0) for self-hosting; 32,768-token recommended output.
Is GPT-5.6 Terra or Qwen3-235B-A22B cheaper for output?
Qwen3-235B-A22B is cheaper at $2.80 per million output tokens, against $12 for GPT-5.6 Terra — roughly 4.3× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; GPT-5.6 Terra has tiered pricing: Launch list was $2.50/$15; cut to $2/$12 on 2026-07-30. Above 272K input the whole request bills 2x input / 1.5x output. Cached input $0.20/MTok; cache writes 1.25x input; batch $1/$6. Qwen3-235B-A22B has tiered pricing: Model Studio International $0.70 input / $2.80 output per MTok (non-thinking); thinking-mode output $8.40. Open weights (Apache 2.0) for self-hosting; 32,768-token recommended output.
Which has the larger context window, GPT-5.6 Terra or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
GPT-5.6 Terra accepts 1.05M tokens against 128K for Qwen3-235B-A22B. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do GPT-5.6 Terra and Qwen3-235B-A22B support the same reasoning levels?
GPT-5.6 Terra exposes none, low, medium, high, xhigh, max, while Qwen3-235B-A22B exposes low, high, max.
Should I use GPT-5.6 Terra or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
Both sit in the balanced tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. GPT-5.6 Terra suits cost-sensitive production; Qwen3-235B-A22B suits open-weight deployments.
Can I self-host GPT-5.6 Terra or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
Qwen3-235B-A22B 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: Qwen3-235B-A22B costs $0.70 per 1M tokens versus $2 for GPT-5.6 Terra — a 2.9x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: GPT-5.6 Terra takes 1.05M against 128K for Qwen3-235B-A22B — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Deployment: Qwen3-235B-A22B publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
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