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Evaluating GPT-5.6 Sol on Hack The Box Challenges

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol achieved an 87.2% benchmark score on the HTB-Challenger Benchmark, solving 15 of 16 Hack The Box challenges with a median cost of $0.29 per challenge and a total cost of $11.82. The model solved all Very Easy, Easy, and Medium challenges, but only 3 of 4 Hard challenges, with one false positive, and its benchmark score dropped to 71.8% on Hard challenges.

read3 min views4 publishedAug 16, 2026
Evaluating GPT-5.6 Sol on Hack The Box Challenges
Image: Theaq (auto-discovered)
For some personal observations about this model, please see the

[Solving Hack The Box Challenges with GPT-5.6]post.

This blog post is part of a series of tests for the

[HTB-Challenger Benchmark]The HTB-Challenger Benchmark evaluates LLMs’ ability to find and exploit security vulnerabilities. It tests models against selected Hack The Box challenges of varying difficulty and measures their performance. For more information, visit the[HTB-Challenger Benchmark page]. . See the[benchmark results page]for all results and the[benchmark methodology]to learn how the benchmark is calculated.

Cost vs. Benchmark Score #

The highlighted point is this model. Models closer to the upper-left achieve a higher benchmark score at a lower median cost per challenge.

Overall benchmark results #

Number of challenges: 16Number of solved challenges: 15Number of false positives: 1Runs where the model gave up: 0Runs that reached the step or cost limit: 0Runs where the model got stuck: 0Benchmark score: 87.2%

Metric Per challenge (median) Total
Model steps 8.5 274
Model cost $0.29 $11.82
Duration 00:02:05 01:06:14
Number of input tokens 0.09M 7.88M
Number of output tokens 0.00M 0.11M
Number of read_file tool calls
0.5 27
Number of write_file tool calls
0.0 12
Number of execute_command tool calls
8.5 271
Number of web_search tool calls
0.0 7

Results by challenge difficulty #

All resource-usage metrics are medians per challenge.

Metric Very Easy Easy Medium Hard
Results
Number of challenges 4 4 4 4
Number of solved challenges 4 4 4 3
Number of false positives 0 0 0 1
Runs where the model gave up 0 0 0 0
Runs that reached the step or cost limit 0 0 0 0
Runs where the model got stuck 0 0 0 0
Benchmark score 98.8% 96.7% 97.6% 71.8%
Median per challenge
Model steps 6 10 8.5 25
Model cost $0.10 $0.18 $0.32 $1.49
Duration 00:00:49 00:01:35 00:02:07 00:06:35
Number of input tokens 0.03M 0.05M 0.11M 1.08M
Number of output tokens 0.00M 0.00M 0.00M 0.01M
Number of read_file tool calls
0.5 1.0 0.5 0.0
Number of write_file tool calls
0.0 0.5 0.5 0.5
Number of execute_command tool calls
4.0 8.0 9.5 31.5
Number of web_search tool calls
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
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