GPT-5 Medium vs GPT-5.6 Sol: Specs & Benchmark Comparison
GPT-5 Medium and GPT-5.6 Sol both come from OpenAI, GPT-5 Medium was released in August 2025, and GPT-5.6 Sol followed 11 months later in July 2026.
We have 2 benchmark results for GPT-5 Medium and 45 benchmark results for GPT-5.6 Sol, but they overlap on a single test: GPQA, where GPT-5.6 Sol scores 94.6% against 88.0%.
GPT-5 Medium is the cheaper API at $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, roughly 4 times cheaper than GPT-5.6 Sol at $5 and $30. GPT-5.6 Sol takes the larger context window at 1M tokens, compared with 400K for GPT-5 Medium. Both accept text and images as input.
| Characteristic | GPT-5 Medium | GPT-5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|
| Company | OpenAI | OpenAI |
| Release Date | August 6, 2025 | July 9, 2026 |
| Parameters | — | — |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Context (input) | 400K | 1.1M |
| Context (output) | 128K | 128K |
| Input Price / 1M | $1.25 | $5.00 |
| Output Price / 1M | $10.00 | $30.00 |
| Average Score | 88.5% | 63.9% |
| Benchmarks | ||
| GPQA | 88.0% | 94.6% |
Visual Benchmark Comparison
Verdict
GPT-5.6 Sol leads in 2 out of 4 comparison categories.
Both models show comparable average scores: GPT-5 Medium — 0.9, GPT-5.6 Sol — 0.6.
GPT-5 Medium is 3.1x cheaper: input $1.25/1M vs $5.00/1M tokens.
GPT-5.6 Sol supports a larger context: 1M vs 400K tokens.
GPT-5.6 Sol is newer: released 7/9/2026 vs 8/6/2025.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for coding — GPT-5 Medium or GPT-5.6 Sol?
Which model is cheaper — GPT-5 Medium or GPT-5.6 Sol?
Which has a larger context window — GPT-5 Medium or GPT-5.6 Sol?
The GPT-5 Medium and GPT-5.6 Sol comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the GPT-5 Medium or GPT-5.6 Sol page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.