GPT-5.1 Medium vs GPT-5.6 Luna: Specs & Benchmark Comparison

GPT-5.1 Medium and GPT-5.6 Luna both come from OpenAI, GPT-5.1 Medium was released in November 2025, and GPT-5.6 Luna followed 8 months later in July 2026.

We have 1 benchmark result for GPT-5.1 Medium and 45 benchmark results for GPT-5.6 Luna, but they were measured on different benchmarks, so there is no like-for-like scoreboard.

GPT-5.6 Luna is the cheaper API at $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens, roughly 6 times cheaper than GPT-5.1 Medium at $1.25 and $10. GPT-5.6 Luna takes the larger context window at 1M tokens, compared with 400K for GPT-5.1 Medium. Both accept text and images as input.

CharacteristicGPT-5.1 MediumGPT-5.6 Luna
CompanyOpenAIOpenAI
Release DateNovember 11, 2025July 9, 2026
Parameters——
MultimodalYesYes
Context (input)400K1.1M
Context (output)128K128K
Input Price / 1M$1.25$0.20
Output Price / 1M$10.00$1.20
Average Score98.0%51.5%

Verdict

GPT-5.6 Luna leads in 3 out of 4 comparison categories.

Overall Performance

Both models show comparable average scores: GPT-5.1 Medium — 1.0, GPT-5.6 Luna — 0.5.

API Cost

GPT-5.6 Luna is 8.0x cheaper: input $0.20/1M vs $1.25/1M tokens.

Context Window

GPT-5.6 Luna supports a larger context: 1M vs 400K tokens.

Recency

GPT-5.6 Luna is newer: released 7/9/2026 vs 11/11/2025.

More About These Models

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Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better for coding — GPT-5.1 Medium or GPT-5.6 Luna?
Direct comparison on the SWE-Bench benchmark is not available. We recommend reviewing other metrics on the comparison page.
Which model is cheaper — GPT-5.1 Medium or GPT-5.6 Luna?
GPT-5.6 Luna is cheaper for input: $0.20 per 1M tokens vs $1.25.
Which has a larger context window — GPT-5.1 Medium or GPT-5.6 Luna?
GPT-5.6 Luna supports a larger context: 1,050,000 tokens vs 400,000.

The GPT-5.1 Medium and GPT-5.6 Luna comparison is updated for 2026. Data includes benchmark results, API pricing, context window size and other specifications. For more detailed information, visit the GPT-5.1 Medium or GPT-5.6 Luna page. See also the complete list of AI model comparisons.