Grok 4.5 vs GPT-5.6 Terra
Grok 4.5 costs less on both: $0.60 in and $1.80 out per million tokens, against $1.20 in and $3.60 out for GPT-5.6 Terra. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
| Tokens | Grok 4.5grok-4.5 | GPT-5.6 Terragpt-5.6-terra |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.60xAI lists $2.00 · 70% under | $1.20OpenAI lists $2.00 · 40% under |
| Cached input | $0.09xAI lists $0.30 · 70% under | $0.12OpenAI lists $0.20 · 40% under |
| Output | $1.80xAI lists $6.00 · 70% under | $3.60OpenAI lists $12.00 · 70% under |
| Context window | 500,000 tokens | 1,050,000 tokens |
| Max output | — | 128,000 tokens |
| Input | text, image | text, image |
| Released | 2026-07-08 | 2026-07-09 |
| Formats | OpenAI SDK | OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | xAI | OpenAI |
List price: each developer's published rate, read October 2026. A model with no cached rate bills cached tokens at its input rate. Live from GET https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/catalog.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | Grok 4.5 | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $2.10list $7.00 | $4.20list $10.00 |
| 100 long documents | $3.36list $11.20 | $6.72list $12.40 |
| A month of both, daily | $163.80list $546.00 | $327.60list $672.00 |
A chat request is 2,000 input and 500 output tokens; a long document is 50,000 in and 2,000 out; the month is 1,000 chats and 100 documents a day for 30 days, uncached. Over that month Grok 4.5 costs $163.80 less here.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls Grok 4.5; put gpt-5.6-terra in the model field to call GPT-5.6 Terra instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"grok-4.5","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Model pages: Grok 4.5, GPT-5.6 Terra. Pricing by family: Grok, GPT. More comparisons: Grok 4.6 vs Grok 4.5, Grok 4.20 Multi-Agent (0309) vs Grok 4.5, GLM 5.2 vs Grok 4.5, GPT-5.6 Sol vs GPT-5.6 Terra.
Questions
- Which costs less, Grok 4.5 or GPT-5.6 Terra?
- Grok 4.5 costs less on both: $0.60 in and $1.80 out per million tokens, against $1.20 in and $3.60 out for GPT-5.6 Terra.
- Can I switch between them by changing the model id?
- Yes. Both answer in the OpenAI SDK format at the same base URL with the same key. Change the model id from grok-4.5 to gpt-5.6-terra and nothing else.
- Is there a subscription?
- No. Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription or monthly fee. Each top-up locks your prices for 30 days.
- Is Grok 4.5 better than GPT-5.6 Terra?
- Better depends on the job; this page compares what the catalog can measure. Grok 4.5 costs less on both: $0.60 in and $1.80 out per million tokens, against $1.20 in and $3.60 out for GPT-5.6 Terra. Grok 4.5 takes 500,000 tokens of context against 1,050,000 for GPT-5.6 Terra. GPT-5.6 Terra is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.