Sequential decoding of short length binary codes for the additive white Gaussian noise channel is considered. A variant of the variable-bias term (VBT) metric is introduced, producing useful trade-offs between performance and computational complexity. Comparisons are made with tail-biting convolutional codes decoded with a wrap-around Viterbi algorithm (WAVA) and with polar codes under successive-cancellation list (SCL) decoding. It is found that sequential decoding with the improved VBT metric has a better performance–complexity tradeoff than tail-biting codes under WAVA decoding (except at low complexities) but a worse performance–complexity tradeoff than polar codes under SCL decoding (except at high complexities).