Kimi K2.6 vs GPT-5.6 Terra
Kimi K2.6 is the better buy: the AIGROW small-business benchmark cannot tell the two apart, and Kimi K2.6 has the lower list price. Kimi K2.6 passed 15 of 20 tasks and costs $0.95 in and $4 out per million tokens; GPT-5.6 Terra passed 16 and costs $2 in and $12 out.
AIGROW credit covers Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.2, Claude Fable 5.1, GPT-6 Astra, Claude Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6.1 Terra, Grok 4.7 and Gemini 4 Argon. GPT-6.1 Sol below list price
$25 a month brings $110 of API credit and cancels any time; $25 once buys $100. For long documents, GPT-5.6 Terra reads up to 1.05M tokens at once and Kimi K2.6 up to 262K. US dollars, standard rate, shortest context band. Cost per pass from the AIGROW small-business benchmark. Newer model: Kimi K3.1 Pro, GPT-6.1 Terra
- Kimi K2.6
- $11.69
- Tasks passed
- 15 of 20
- GPT-5.6 Terra
- $6.68
- Tasks passed
- 16 of 20
AIGROW small-business benchmark, failed runs included.
Kimi's cheaper previous flagship against OpenAI's GPT-5.6 mid tier at under half the price. GPT-5.6 Terra costs $6.68 per 1,000 passing answers on the AIGROW small-business benchmark, Kimi K2.6 $11.69. 1,000 support replies cost $10.80 on GPT-5.6 Terra and $4.45 on Kimi K2.6, so GPT-5.6 Terra costs 2.4 times as much.
What each one costs
The API price per million tokens and the cheapest app plan with each model, from the makers’ own pages. Each name opens that model’s full price page.
- Kimi K2.6
- On the Moonshot AI API, Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95 per million input tokens and $4 per million output tokens.
- GPT-5.6 Terra
- On the OpenAI API, GPT-5.6 Terra costs $2 per million input tokens and $12 per million output tokens. In ChatGPT, it comes with the free plan, and the cheapest paid plan with it is Go at $8/mo. Plan prices read 14 October 2026.
Side by side
Each maker’s published rate for its standard tier. Cached input is what a repeated prompt prefix costs once the provider has stored it.
| Fact | Kimi K2.6 | GPT-5.6 Terra |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | OpenAI |
| Tier | Workhorses | Workhorses |
| Input, per M tokens | $0.95 | $2.00 |
| Output, per M tokens | $4.00 | $12.00 |
| Cached input | $0.16 | $0.20 |
| Context window | 262K | 1.05M |
| Released | Apr 2026 | 9 Jul 2026 |
| Weights | Open weights | Closed weights |
What a job costs on each
1,000 runs of each job at the two list prices. The gap moves from job to job because the models price input, output and cached context differently.
| Job | Kimi K2.6 | GPT-5.6 Terra | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support reply3,000 in, 400 out. | $4.45 | $10.80 | Kimi K2.6, 59% less |
| Document summary25,000 in, 1,000 out. | $27.75 | $62.00 | Kimi K2.6, 55% less |
| Agent task80,000 in (70,000 cached), 3,000 out. | $32.70 | $70.00 | Kimi K2.6, 53% less |
The token counts are ours, chosen to look like real work; the prices are the makers’. A model with no published cache price bills the agent task’s repeated context at its full input rate.
The small print
What each base rate leaves out, from the makers’ own pages: surcharges, discounts, promotions and cache pricing.
- Kimi K2.6
- Closed to new users since 2026-10-31; Moonshot retires the K2 models by the end of December 2026. Input price is the cache-miss rate; cache hit $0.16. Open weights on Hugging Face (moonshotai/Kimi-K2.6). Changelog gives the month only. Moonshot AI’s pricing page
- GPT-5.6 Terra
- OpenAI calls it the mini tier of the 5.6 family; tiered mid here on price. Price cut 20% on 2026-07-30. Requests above 272K input tokens bill 2x input and 1.5x output ($4 / $18). Cache write $2.50. Batch and Flex 50% off. Data residency adds 10%. OpenAI’s pricing page
Other comparisons
Every head to head on the list that involves Kimi K2.6 or GPT-5.6 Terra.
Compare Kimi K2.6 and GPT-5.6 Terra with 52 other models
The price list sets every model’s input and output price side by side, with what a support reply, a document summary and an agent task cost on each.
Prices checked 12 November 2026