Model Comparison
GPT-5.6 Terra vs Grok 4.6
GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) leads Grok 4.6 (high) by 96 Elo, and their 95% ranges sit 12 Elo apart. Among 78 models, each ranked by its best configuration, GPT-5.6 Terra is #13 and Grok 4.6 is #19. Cost per script: $0.275 for GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) and $0.156 for Grok 4.6 (high).
Last updated , from board data generated at 01:13 UTC.
Picks and Verdict
PickGPT-5.6 Terra
GPT-5.6 Terra (medium)
Pick GPT-5.6 Terra (medium) for everyday drafts, because it costs $0.062 a script against $0.156 for Grok 4.6 (high) and the board can't separate the two.
PickGrok 4.6
Grok 4.6 (high)
Pick Grok 4.6 (high) if tone and YouTube structure are what you check first, since it leads both Terra settings on each for $0.156 a script.
GPT-5.6 Terra is ahead of Grok 4.6 at both settings, and how sure I am depends on the setting. Among the 78 models, each ranked by its best setting, GPT-5.6 Terra is the #13 model and Grok 4.6 the #19 model. GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) leads Grok 4.6 (high) by 96 Elo with separate 95% ranges, strong evidence for that order, and it costs $0.275 a script against $0.156. GPT-5.6 Terra (medium) is the setting that changes the decision. It's 20 Elo above Grok with overlapping ranges, so the board can't separate those two, and it costs $0.062 a script and comes back in under two minutes where Grok takes about five. Ultra adds 76 Elo over medium for more than four times the price, and those two ranges overlap too. Grok earns its place on the things I care about most in a script. It's closer to my tone than either Terra setting, it leads both on YouTube Best Practices, and it holds length better than Terra at medium. Terra at medium writes the cleaner prose. Starting fresh, I'd run Terra at medium for well under half the money.
Disclosure: GPT-5.6 Terra comes from the same lab as one of the four judges, GPT-6.1 Sol. The other three sit outside its lab, so it is never scored by its own lab alone (how the panel works). The judge analysis measures how much each judge favors its own lab.
How to Read the Writing Score, Writing Elo and 95% Ranges
Writing Score and Writing Elo. The Writing Score (0 to 100) is the weighted average of the nine metric scores: seven from the judges, Length Adherence from code and the Slop Score half from each. The Writing Elo is a rating from pairwise comparisons: on each script, each configuration's average across its drafts is compared with every other configuration's, and gaps within the draft-to-draft variation count as draws. Elo rewards winning often, so the two can put configurations in a different order.
Elo ranges. Each 95% range shows how far a configuration's Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently. It comes from resampling every configuration's recorded draft scores on each reference script and ranking again. Comparing two separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between them: ranges far apart are strong evidence for the order, and overlapping ranges do not mean a tie. The reference scripts stay fixed, so the ranges say nothing about new scripts. The methodology page has the full description.
All Thinking Levels of Both Models
Every ranked configuration of GPT-5.6 Terra and Grok 4.6, scored on the same 10 scripts by the same four judges.
- Each row is one configuration: the model at one thinking level. The dot is its Writing Elo, a rating from pairwise comparisons of the scores on each script, and the bar is its 95% range: how far that Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently.
- When two bars overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations. Bars far apart are strong evidence for the order.
- The table under the chart lists the same configurations in the same order and adds the Writing Score (the 0 to 100 consensus of the judges and code), cost, time and configuration rank (the place among all configurations on the board).
Shaded rows are the configurations chosen for the metric comparison below.
| Configuration | Writing Elo | 95% Range | Writing Score | Cost / Script | Time / Script | Reasoning Tokens | Configuration Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) | 2074 | 2035 to 2113 | 81.4 | $0.275 | 8.0 min | N/A | #25 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra (medium) | 1998 | 1952 to 2041 | 80.7 | $0.062 | 1.4 min | N/A | #33 |
| Grok 4.6 (high) | 1978 | 1930 to 2023 | 80.3 | $0.156 | 5.2 min | 18,588 | #36 |
Cost is one script at the API list price of the route used, uncached and without judging. Time is the average for one accepted script, retries included. N/A under Reasoning Tokens means the board has no separate reasoning count for that route.
Computed Findings Across Thinking Levels
Each finding is computed from the configurations above. Where two 95% ranges overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations.
- Best Configurations Head to Head. GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) leads Grok 4.6 (high) by 96 Elo, and their 95% ranges do not overlap (2035 to 2113 against 1930 to 2023), which is strong evidence for that order.
- Cheapest Configuration Overlapping the Top One. GPT-5.6 Terra (medium), at $0.062 per script, is the cheapest configuration whose 95% range overlaps that of GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra), at $0.275 per script: 1952 to 2041 against 2035 to 2113, so the board cannot separate them. GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) costs about 4.4 times as much per script.
- Cheapest GPT-5.6 Terra Configuration Above Grok 4.6's Best. The cheapest GPT-5.6 Terra configuration with a higher Writing Elo than Grok 4.6 (high), at Elo 1978 and $0.156 per script, is GPT-5.6 Terra (medium), at Elo 1998 and $0.062 per script. Their 95% ranges overlap, so the board cannot separate them. It costs less than the configuration it beats.
- Lowest to Highest Thinking Level. GPT-5.6 Terra moves +76 Elo from medium to ultra, at about 4.4 times the cost per script.
Two Chosen Configurations Compared
Pick one configuration of each model to compare their metric scores, consistency across drafts and per-script scores. Each menu starts on the model's best configuration.
Scores by Metric
GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) scores higher on seven of the nine metrics and Grok 4.6 (high) on two. Weighted by each metric's share of the Writing Score, Writing Craft & Clarity does the most to put GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) ahead, with a 2.8-point lead on that metric. The weight beside each metric is its share of the Writing Score.
Consistency Across Drafts
| GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) | Grok 4.6 (high) | |
|---|---|---|
| Score spread across drafts (±) | 1.38 | 1.82 |
| Lowest script score | 79.8 Script 4 | 78.5 Script 3 |
| Highest script score | 83.0 Script 6 | 82.8 Script 6 |
| Range across scripts | 3.2 | 4.3 |
Spread is how much the Writing Score moves between a configuration's drafts, and lower is steadier. Green marks the better number in each row.
Scores by Script
Writing Score on each reference script. Gap is GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) minus Grok 4.6 (high), and the higher score is in bold.
| Script | GPT-5.6 Terra (ultra) | Grok 4.6 (high) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script 1 opinion / warning explainer | 81.1 | 81.6 | -0.5 |
| Script 2 news-analysis / skeptical explainer | 82.1 | 80.8 | +1.3 |
| Script 3 personal roadmap / opinion | 82.5 | 78.5 | +4.0 |
| Script 4 short explainer | 79.8 | 80.2 | -0.4 |
| Script 5 news-analysis / opinion explainer | 82.2 | 81.1 | +1.1 |
| Script 6 founder announcement / personal origin story | 83.0 | 82.8 | +0.2 |
| Script 7 personal technical walkthrough / agentic workflow case study | 80.6 | 79.0 | +1.6 |
| Script 8 product release announcement / personal observation | 80.3 | 79.7 | +0.6 |
| Script 9 career guide / hiring analysis | 81.8 | 80.4 | +1.4 |
| Script 10 engineering process walkthrough / presentation adaptation | 80.6 | 79.1 | +1.5 |
Scorecards and Thinking Pages
Each configuration name in the table above opens its own scorecard.
Compare With Another Model
Pick a second model. A pair with its own written match-up opens that page, and any other pair opens in the comparison tool.
Nearby Match-Ups by Best Writing Elo
Every configuration wrote five drafts for each of the same 10 briefs, from the same prompt. Generation was closed-book, with the prompt as the only source and no web search or other tools. Each judge scores every draft once: Claude Opus 5.5 at medium effort through the Claude Code subscription, GPT-6.1 Sol at medium reasoning through the Codex CLI, GLM 5.3 Flash through OpenRouter, and Jev 1.13, a typed judge from TypeSafe that answers each metric as a multiple-choice question. The channel's finished script is their reference for the voice, and it gets no score on the board itself.
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