GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

234 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by Topfi

140 Comments

simonw

12 hours ago

I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so...

Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p...

I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models.

Astra uses less tokens overall too, for better results.

Astra transcript here: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...

dector

6 hours ago

Btw, they had 3D pelican-on-the-bicycle easter egg in one of the promo videos: https://youtu.be/bOC3DisEOfg?t=117 so I'm pretty sure that they spent some small amount of resources to train the model to produce good svg version as well. :D

stymaar

an hour ago

When you see how good the output of the Luna model without reasoning is compared to SotA just a year and a half ago, it's pretty clear that it's been trained on explicitly.

maleldil

10 minutes ago

I don't see how this is proof, and not just that the model got the better. You're comparing models a year and a half apart; this is a lifetime in LLM development.

justinbaker84

35 minutes ago

Your comparison grid is one of the most useful comparison grids I have ever seen in terms of measuring AI.

It feels silly to say that about making a pelican image but it really shows the difference in output and cost in an easy to understand way.

scotty79

5 minutes ago

They really can't decide which way pelican's knees should bend, do they?

threatripper

7 hours ago

It seems to start understanding how bicycles work. Look at the front fork. There are reasons why it's shaped the way it is in real bicycles. If you do physical simulations in 3D with reinforcement learning you will start understanding that most of the arrangements that the other agents use just won't work.

epihelix

6 hours ago

Yes, the curve of the front fork on the max pelican was what I noticed also. It's impressive (if not an accident), and a remarkably accurate bike overall. The pelican just needs to raise their seat a little.

steve-atx-7600

9 hours ago

You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?

simonw

7 hours ago

Here's 'Generate an SVG of a ring-tailed lemur riding an electric scooter' at reasoning level max: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...

Quote from the thinking trace:

> I’m thinking about how a helmet would obscure lemur ears, but using an electric scooter helmet seems responsible.

It's pretty solid - face is a little wonky but excellent tail and scooter.

stymaar

25 minutes ago

What if you asked a front/rear/top-side view of the scene (pelican or lemur)?

wolttam

37 minutes ago

Quote from the thinking *summary*.

And it left out the helmet :(

pilaf

4 hours ago

Interesting how the background is almost identical to two of the Astra pelicans'.

benatkin

5 hours ago

Hmm, the face makes it not work as a one shot artifact.

CamperBob2

6 hours ago

If you want to see something brutal, ask for a zebra riding a scooter. I have yet to see any models do a credible job at that.

ulrikrasmussen

2 hours ago

I remember that early image models couldn't generate a cyclops no matter how you prompted it, it would at best put a third eye in the forehead.

y1n0

9 hours ago

I would expect it happens more organically where people’s discussion of the benchmark and posted results find their way into the training data, like anything else on the internet.

Kranar

9 hours ago

What is this supposed to mean exactly? Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles? Like how exactly do you expect them to be doing that anyways? Hiring graphic artists to create SVGs of bike riding pelicans and feeding thousands of them into the model's training set?

mudkipdev

8 hours ago

Generate two images, get a vision model to judge, then RL reward the better one. And yes, OpenAI employees on twitter bragged about the model's SVG capabilities. So there are clearly people working there who care about it.

awakeasleep

8 hours ago

You gotta look up how RLHF works before you ask a demanding question like this.

dgellow

3 hours ago

> Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles?

Yes

kibae

8 hours ago

There was a HN post that tested this hypothesis a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010129

stymaar

14 minutes ago

I don't think it's a great rebuttal, quite the opposite actually: it's the same prompt with the most obvioy tweak you can imagine and the results are all the same. That definitely looks like it's been something the models have been trained on, and not some emergent capability (and if you take into account how nonthinking Luna compares to the SotA models from a year an half ago: https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/?pag... it becomes even more obvious)

mi_lk

8 hours ago

It stopped being a valuable benchmark proxy quite a few model versions ago. Simon knows it, so is everyone who’s serious about it

Treat it like a bit as is

benatkin

7 hours ago

It's actually not just valuable, but infinitely valuable. Because it's imaginary, there is no way to do it perfectly, and thus the possibilities are endless, and it tests out both the formulation and execution of ideas.

jsdalton

10 hours ago

Simon do you have a page somewhere that shows _all_ of the penguins created by various models across time?

You’ve been doing this public service for so long (well, for so long in “AI hype” years anyway) that it’d be fascinating to see the evolution of this artifact across time.

simonw

10 hours ago

For the moment the best place to see them all is to browse the tag on my blog - 140 posts now! https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/

I'm running out of excuses not to build a proper comparison site though. Maybe I'll have Astra do rhat.

bahmboo

7 hours ago

Would be great to spend some money (other people's money) on paying some illustrators and artists to do the same for comparison. It could be straight images converted to SVG or direct vector graphics.

Gander5739

4 hours ago

Doesn't that somewhat miss the point? The models can't see and check their work, for instance.

bahmboo

3 hours ago

I'm not clear what you are saying. I am curious about what humans can do in the same context. It's becoming a standard I think for some tasks. E.g. how does a Gen AI stack up against a human in quality and "cost". Perhaps I'm missing what you are asking.

vb-8448

10 hours ago

I find curios that Astra's pelicans are basically the same (yellow sun top right corner, green bike, same bike shape, same legs style, very similar background) while in other there is more randomness.

thimabi

10 hours ago

This tracks with what OpenAI has been saying about Astra: that it tends to do things in a certain way and it’s up to you to prompt it to change its style.

pizza234

10 hours ago

Astra is the only model that correctly depicts occlusion of crank and leg, although interestingly, at max and medium levels (not in between).

vessenes

9 hours ago

Looked to me like it missed the chain though.

jeffybefffy519

4 hours ago

Shouldnt you give the AI a different task each time? otherwise the model companies just optimise for this benchmark because its in their best interest to...

petilon

9 hours ago

Astra pelican looks amazing: it looks like it was made by a professional artist. All the others look like they were made by kindergartners.

mkagenius

5 hours ago

Do you ever randomize on a particular model - like try and get 3 outputs and pick one at random?

Coz who knows if astra low will produce max like output if tried once more.

alastairr

5 hours ago

It's mildly interesting that the bikes always seem to be front wheel facing the right.

EugeneOZ

35 minutes ago

I love Astra pelicans! Awesome results!

BrokenCogs

11 hours ago

Interesting that all of the bikes are turquoise colored, except for the medium effort

andai

11 hours ago

Oh my goodness. I was not prepared for Luna on "none".

Reminded me of https://clocks.brianmoore.com/

eterm

an hour ago

It's so meme-worthy next to the astra-max for any situation of "What you were promised" vs "What you received".

tyre

10 hours ago

Haiku the GOAT

Xunjin

11 hours ago

Do you have other ideas of "combinations" for this kind of benchmark?

I'm wondering if this is being trained on by the models today.

r_lee

10 hours ago

I have a feeling they've been doing that for a while now, even if unintentional, as it's such a well known benchmark

lspears

11 hours ago

Luna's price seems off

droidjj

10 hours ago

The price is probably coming from when Luna was first released. OpenAI slashed the price by 80% at the end of July.

simonw

10 hours ago

Yes! Good catch, thanks - I'll fix that.

simonw

9 hours ago

I had the prices wrong on Sol and Terra as well - they've all had price drops:

https://openai.com/index/advancing-the-price-performance-fro...

Sol discount is until November 21, 2026 according to https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/changelog

  Luna — costs in cents
  +--------+--------+---------+
  | Effort | Before | After   |
  +--------+--------+---------+
  | max    |   7.83 |    1.57 |
  | xhigh  |   4.24 |    0.85 |
  | high   |   2.46 |    0.49 |
  | medium |   1.26 |    0.25 |
  | low    |   0.76 |    0.15 |
  | none   |   0.71 |    0.14 |
  +--------+--------+---------+
  Per million tokens:
  Before: $1 input / $6 output
  After:  $0.20 input / $1.20 output

  Sol — costs in cents
  +--------+--------+---------+
  | Effort | Before | After   |
  +--------+--------+---------+
  | max    |  48.55 |   32.37 |
  | xhigh  |  24.11 |   16.08 |
  | high   |  10.38 |    6.92 |
  | medium |  10.55 |    7.03 |
  | low    |   8.33 |    5.55 |
  | none   |   5.90 |    3.93 |
  +--------+--------+---------+
  Per million tokens:
  Before: $5 input / $30 output
  After:  $4 input / $20 output

  Terra — costs in cents
  +--------+--------+---------+
  | Effort | Before | After   |
  +--------+--------+---------+
  | max    |  32.09 |   25.67 |
  | xhigh  |  14.67 |   11.74 |
  | high   |   3.74 |    2.99 |
  | medium |   3.46 |    2.77 |
  | low    |   3.47 |    2.78 |
  | none   |   2.60 |    2.08 |
  +--------+--------+---------+
  Per million tokens:
  Before: $2.50 input / $15 output
  After:  $2 input / $12 output

CamperBob2

6 hours ago

Crazy how much the Astra pelicans resemble GLM 5.3's (https://crimson-jeri-74.tiiny.site/), down to the color of the bike and the scarf.

The improved front fork design mentioned by Threatripper is about the only thing Astra is doing better, IMO.

bnorton

9 hours ago

You’re closer to this than I am but do you find it odd that helmets are almost never included? Biking is almost always accompanied by helmets

maxlapdev

9 hours ago

But pelicans are almost never accompanied by helmets, so it cancels out.

sumedh

9 hours ago

> Biking is almost always accompanied by helmets

Isnt Netherlands the leader in bike riders and they dont wear helmets.

neutronicus

9 hours ago

At least one reasoning trace I saw considered a helmet and discarded the idea because it was worried about obscuring some detail

fHr

10 hours ago

Luna is my go to daily model it's great value

tuo-lei

9 hours ago

Me toooo, for all my personal projects I need to pay for the tokens~ At workplace I use sol because I don't need to pay

ghthor

10 hours ago

Mine as well, it’s fast and keeps me in flow; and cheap!

PacificSpecific

7 hours ago

Fallen off the homepage so what? I genuinely don't understand

yreg

5 hours ago

So he is posting it again because he believes it is crucial information for us.

Apparently the crowd agrees because they keep upvoting these.

dolebirchwood

5 hours ago

Gotta double-dip on those internet points.

jjcm

8 hours ago

It's ability to handle non-90 degree cutouts and shapes for web dev is one of the best I've seen. The vision model on this is VERY capable.

Here's an image design source of truth: https://image.non.io/78f4cd8b-2560-4643-9a51-96a89171f994.we...

And here's the page it build from it: https://image.non.io/e7d3a9e5-f9df-4fd8-b79f-1f90280f978f.we...

Note the flowing svg lines, and how accurately it recreated them. Here's Opus 5 for comparison - you can really see how while Astra really recreated the flow that was in the original design, opus only got the general vibe: https://image.non.io/dfe13de0-4487-431f-8b69-544ff3030dac.we...

One thing I will say is you are paying for quality. That site build cost $24 - extremely non-trivial for a simple frontend.

copperx

5 hours ago

> That site build cost $24 - extremely non-trivial for a simple frontend.

I would say that $24 is trivial IF that's the final design. The truth is that the cost doesn't leave much room for error or experimentation.

kolinko

16 minutes ago

Wdym no room for error or experimation? Changes are even cheaper, and in my experience they are faster and way cheaper with models than with designers.

JumpCrisscross

2 hours ago

> truth is that the cost doesn't leave much room for error or experimentation

Compared to what?

mydreamof

4 hours ago

I don't get it. For me it seems Opus was more accurate in terms of for example this small building in the right down corner

CapsAdmin

3 hours ago

I would say opus was in some ways more accurate, but missed the higher level curvature feel of the site that astra picked up on.

It sounds completely trivial and likely I'm wrong here, but could it be that opus saw the reference image squished? That might explain the sharper horizontal curvature

esikich

4 hours ago

They look pretty similar to me, I'm not sure what you're seeing that is so much better.

w4yai

4 hours ago

Also the curves and background lines that separate the right image from the left content

eurg

4 hours ago

Check the source oft the laser beams.

XCSme

12 hours ago

That's some crazy SVG generation:

https://aibenchy.com/compare/openai-gpt-6-astra-high/google-...

It took a while to test it, initially OpenRouter was giving Not Found errors for this model ID.

embedding-shape

12 hours ago

At the bottom it says "Score 98.58", what measure is used for this score? It's kind of horrible, the perspective is all off (legs of the table makes that very obvious), the mouse/hamster has two mouths, a stub for a right paw, looks like left hand holds a melon on a stick or something, and there are pluses in the background for some reason. Not sure it'd call it "close to perfect" which the score seems to want to indicate.

XCSme

11 hours ago

Do you prefer the fable one?

It's more "correct" but looks a lot worse in my opinion:

https://aibenchy.com/compare/openai-gpt-6-astra-high/google-...

kzrdude

2 hours ago

And not to mention, the hamster is standing at the wrong end of the table.

embedding-shape

an hour ago

Incredible, I've played table-tennis since I was like 14, and I didn't notice that egregious error yet I noticed all the other small ones! Thanks for pointing that out, should have been very obvious.

sehugg

an hour ago

And also the hamster has two mouths

XCSme

11 hours ago

Yeah, that's confusing, the score is for the entire benchmark, not for SVG generation only.

Good point about the mouths, I just noticed, lol

Imo, it's still better than most models, I personally like the stylized perspective.

You can view here all generations for all models: https://aibenchy.com/showcase/

XCSme

11 hours ago

I've replaced "Score" there with model ranking, to reduce confusion, thanks for the feedback!

embedding-shape

an hour ago

Now I'm wondering why it's ranked #4 instead, not sure this reduced confusion :P

What panel of judges are you using for scoring/ranking this? Seems subjective enough to not be able to be ranked/scored at all

XCSme

an hour ago

Yeah, ranking is for entire model, not only SVG generation. Maybe I remove it entirely and add generation date instead.

I was thinking to manually grade/rank the SVGs, but I decided against it, as it is indeed subjective.

I was thinking it could have at least a simple objective check (hamster doesn't have extra or missing parts, table has 2 sides, and net is in the middle, etc.).

satvikpendem

11 hours ago

That's quite shocking, at a sufficiently advanced level we can make all non-realistic graphics purely out of SVGs, as they'd have good scaling for things like logos and app icons. I know it was technically and theoretically possible before AI but most people weren't spending hours tweaking SVG HTML. I remember making an SVG dark mode toggle icon and it took days to get it right, I assume it's one shottable now.

dprkh

9 hours ago

I thought all the designers have been using vector graphics for a long time now.

embedding-shape

an hour ago

"Designer" is a very broad term and can mean very different things to different people, not everyone is doing stuff that can be represented nicely by vectors.

mceachen

8 hours ago

Aldus Freehand 1.0 was released in 1988. Adobe Illustrator was first released in 1987.

kulahan

11 hours ago

That photo looks pretty hilariously stupid, so this appears to be more of a first toe dip rather than some indication we can one-shot a previously difficult process.

appplication

10 hours ago

Sure, it is a bit cartoonish but it’s relatively impressive. I do wonder what you would get if you asked for photorealism

redox99

7 hours ago

The problem is not photorealism. The SVG is outright dumb, its on the wrong side of the table, the table has fucked up geometry (its tilted) and many more minor flaws.

XCSme

3 hours ago

That's true, if it really "knows" stuff, a bit weird to have basic flaws like 2 mouths, and sitting on the side...

viccis

5 hours ago

>AGI

>Playing ping pong from the side of the table

I think marketing might be getting a bit absurd at this point

mawadev

2 hours ago

I must live in a different world or it feels like I'm reading LLM generated comments, but who exactly is falling for this marketing?

I even keep seeing obvious stealth marketing like this: "<topic> and how do I use it with <product> in <product>"

readams

10 hours ago

The Astra one looks pretty good except it's standing on the wrong side of the table

MisterMunchkin

5 hours ago

$10/$50 is incredibly expensive compared to Chinese models which are cents.

I think they’re really going to struggle selling these models long-term. My company is already massively cutting down on access because they’ve realised most people don’t actually produce any value using it. All the tokenmaxers have ruined it for the rest of us now that accounting have seen the costs.

gentlewater

3 hours ago

Not really comparable IMO. Astra and Fable are not the every day workhorse you reach for to do basic tasks (unless your company has fuck you-money), they’re the tool you break out when you need the absolute strongest performance. There are plenty of tasks where finding and fixing one or two extra edge cases saves the business a lot of money, even if the cost is high. The best example would be scanning for vulnerabilities, if these models weren’t kneecapped in that area.

ghosty141

2 hours ago

We have ChatGPT Pro at work and I usually use Terra medium/high and only bring out Sol High when the big or feature actually requires "thinking"/complex behavior. This has worked pretty well for me and it's very token efficient

KptMarchewa

4 hours ago

the only thing that matters is cost per task. Astra seems to be massively efficient.

1saadcodes

3 hours ago

The higher price seems less important if it actually gets the job done with fewer tokens. I'm still very worried that this will end up coming back to bite us, by becoming more expensive once they inevitably nerf it. Every major model provider does that now after all

kingstnap

13 hours ago

Its also available finally to Pro users! Just took 24 hours.

InsideOutSanta

13 hours ago

They gave out bankable resets for every day people on pro plans didn't get Astra. Given that, I wish they'd waited a few more days before activating it on my account :-D

wincy

12 hours ago

They haven’t activated Astra for me yet, I have two resets now. I’ve been using the opportunity to test out how good 5.6 Sol is at computer use asking it to generate stuff in Blender which has been… interesting

Edit: nevermind it JUST gave me a notification to use it!

embedding-shape

12 hours ago

> They gave out bankable resets for every day people on pro plans didn't get Astra.

Yeah, when I saw that Tweet I knew the person was saying it because they knew it'll be available within 24h.

paxys

12 hours ago

That's a pretty genius internal incentive to move fast.

sumedh

9 hours ago

Just got access to it on Plus plan in Australia. 2 Banked resets as well.

d2p

2 hours ago

Odd that the tool call failure rate is so high (5%) for the OpenAI provider than Azure (0.2-0.5%).

algoth1

12 hours ago

Just got it. European plus user here. Only codex, no chatgpt

upcoming-sesame

3 hours ago

Any tips on using Astra as orchestrator with Luna workers efficiently in codex?

logged4upvoting

2 hours ago

(This applies to Sol but probably works for Astra too)

I've created with Sol a skill called Low Quota Mode that intends to reduce the use of tokens usages by the frontier (intelligent model) and delegate the use of bulk reading of docs/code and implementation to a sub-agent running Luna Max. Sol is asked to supervise, read the diffs and approves the commit/pr.

The skill might need some iterations while you use it, for example at the end of a rough session you can ask Sol how did it went, which were the points of conflict with Luna and try to iron them little by little by editing the skill.

Also in difficult tasks, ask to babysit the sub-agent model, I've seen it makes more effort into communication between frontier and sub-agent to guide the task with more care.

So far it has reduced my tokens usage a lot (have not quantified but the quota lasts more).

friendlypenguin

5 hours ago

I was really hoping for Astra to be less expensive then Opus...

redox99

4 hours ago

It is (uses way less tokens)

simianwords

4 hours ago

No it isn't cheaper, any source for task vs price comparison to Sol?

Edit:

GPT-6 Astra (low): 57 Intelligence Index, $7.70/M tokens

GPT-5.6 Sol (high): 57 Intelligence Index, $3.08/M tokens

So for the same measured intelligence, Sol costs only 40% as much — i.e. ~60% cheaper, while Astra is ~2.5× more expensive.

Why is the burden of proof on me tho!?

slopinthebag

37 minutes ago

they said opus, not sol, it's cheaper than opus by almost half at max.

astra high is also 3x cheaper than opus max at basically the same intelligence.

astra high is also about as expensive as sol max while being more intelligent.

astra medium is cheaper than sol max while also being cheaper and roughly same intelligence.

im going to replace my sol usage with astra high/medium i think

caveat: benchmarks are really fuzzy with llms

wickedsight

3 hours ago

This is the second comment I see where you write "no it isn't", without providing a source for your statement. Then you follow it by asking for a source. So is there a source you can provide to back up your statement?

dgellow

3 hours ago

It’s supposed to work the other way, if you make a positive claim that it is cheaper, where is your proof?

vb-8448

11 hours ago

Played in codex app a couple of hours today: it feels much faster than SOL, even if the TPS is half of it.

jaesonaras

10 hours ago

Anyone had success using Astra as a Foundry model via Github Copilot? The error I get is that tooling is not available if reasoning has a value.

gavinray

13 hours ago

I have GPT-6 access in Codex and OpenAI API now

I'm a Business plan user with Cyber verification enabled, FWIW.

embedding-shape

12 hours ago

Same just got access literally this minute, Pro user here, no Cyber verification but have passed my ID over to them back in 2024 or something, maybe at the ChatGPT 3 API launch or something?

Has there been anything published about if Astra uses different amount of usage from your subscription plan compared to Sol? Don't recall coming across that in the press releases.

r_lee

13 hours ago

is Azure for this actually ZDR?

jiggawatts

4 hours ago

It cracks me up that you have to ask in a public forum because the vendors purposefully obscure this critical information.

The only reason most of my customers would use Azure Foundry instead of OpenAI directly is the ZDR assurance but it is so incredibly difficult to extract out of their model menu.

There is no trivial way to block non-ZDR models either so every customer has to “vet” and individually approve models.

If anyone from Microsoft is reading this: get your act together! You’re failing at the one thing people might want to pay you to do!

r_lee

43 minutes ago

from my understanding, ZDR for this is for vetted customers only + their whole "privacy preserving abuse monitoring" or whatever is active

but again, seems like there's no word from Azure if this applies to them.

very confusing.

forrestthewoods

3 hours ago

Threw $10 at this to help me prepare for my league’s fantasy auction this weekend. It spend $3.50 and then said “this action would cause you to go above your spending limit”.

Then I threw $100 for a Codex Max sub and it included Astra and it did it for me.

Sure seems like Astra is expensive AF.

starik36

12 hours ago

What is the actual utility of using this model on Azure? It's twice as expensive, according to the link.

Do Azure offer something that simply hitting the OpenAI endpoint doesn't provide?

hhh

10 hours ago

It's the same price as regular processing. You get guarantees microsoft give you, which are ones OpenAI won't (or require dedicated spend,) and you can use azure identities for access.

Peanuts99

3 hours ago

If you've got access to an Azure subscription and you don't pay the bill personally.

claiir

11 hours ago

They’re ZDR and the OAI ones aren’t

nibbleyou

6 hours ago

Does anyone know if it is not ZDR on the codex app usage too. I am assuming it isn't

olalonde

10 hours ago

WTHIT?

spdustin

9 hours ago

ZDR = Zero Data Retention — they don't store your inputs/outputs.

viccis

5 hours ago

AKA extortion

itsjustkev

11 hours ago

Compared to OpenAI flex? I'm pretty sure that is their batch processing endpoint, which is naturally cheaper.

cute_boi

12 hours ago

I got it, but sadly no resets...

user

13 hours ago

[deleted]