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Evaluating GPT-5.6 Terra on Hack The Box Challenges

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Terra achieved a 64.6% benchmark score on the HTB-Challenger Benchmark, solving 12 of 16 Hack The Box challenges with a median cost of $0.24 per challenge and a total cost of $10.38. The model solved all 4 Very Easy challenges, 3 of 4 Easy, 3 of 4 Medium, and 2 of 4 Hard challenges, with no false positives and 4 runs where it gave up.

read3 min views28 publishedAug 16, 2026
Evaluating GPT-5.6 Terra 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: 12Number of false positives: 0Runs where the model gave up: 4Runs that reached the step or cost limit: 0Runs where the model got stuck: 0Benchmark score: 64.6%

Metric Per challenge (median) Total
Model steps 16.5 428
Model cost $0.24 $10.38
Duration 00:03:16 02:29:17
Number of input tokens 0.23M 16.61M
Number of output tokens 0.01M 0.26M
Number of read_file tool calls
0.0 18
Number of write_file tool calls
0.0 6
Number of execute_command tool calls
15.5 418
Number of web_search tool calls
0.0 6

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 3 3 2
Number of false positives 0 0 0 0
Runs where the model gave up 0 1 1 2
Runs that reached the step or cost limit 0 0 0 0
Runs where the model got stuck 0 0 0 0
Benchmark score 98.9% 73.8% 72.1% 45.9%
Median per challenge
Model steps 6 13 23.5 32
Model cost $0.05 $0.14 $0.45 $0.89
Duration 00:00:39 00:02:52 00:05:19 00:08:06
Number of input tokens 0.03M 0.12M 0.70M 1.59M
Number of output tokens 0.00M 0.01M 0.02M 0.02M
Number of read_file tool calls
0.5 0.5 0.0 0.5
Number of write_file tool calls
0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Number of execute_command tool calls
4.5 11.0 22.5 35.5
Number of web_search tool calls
0.0 0.5 0.0 0.0
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