{"slug": "the-pelican-comparison-grid-for-astra-is-pretty-interesting", "title": "The Pelican comparison grid for Astra is pretty interesting", "summary": "Simon Willison's comparison grid of AI-generated pelicans shows OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra produces significantly better images than GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna across all reasoning levels, with Astra low outperforming any GPT-5.6 Sol model for 9.55 cents. Astra costs about twice as much as Sol ($10/million input, $50/million output vs. $5/$30) but uses fewer tokens, narrowing the price gap. Willison notes Astra and Luna both used 16 input tokens versus 26 for Sol and Terra, suggesting a possible closer relationship between Astra and Luna.", "body_md": "I got access to GPT-6 Astra this afternoon, so naturally I used it to generate [SVGs of pelicans riding bicycles](https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/) - at low, medium, high, xhigh and max reasoning levels (Astra doesn't support reasoning=none). Then I rendered those pelicans in [a comparison grid](https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-pelicans.html) with GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna, and beyond being fun the result was surprisingly useful.\n\nSee [the grid](https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-pelicans.html) for full quality images. Here's [the transcript](https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.github.com%2Fsimonw%2Ff789d2784fc6c5b870cc80f0b7cd9d01) that created the GPT-6 Nova pelicans.\n\nThere are a few interesting things that stand out from this grid.\n\n- The Astra pelicans are *much better* . The very best GPT-5.6-Sol pelican (I liked xhigh better than max) is still pretty clearly a bunch of abstract shapes. Every single one of the Astra pelicans, from low to xhigh, looks better than that. The Astra max one is really good.\n- Astra below max still doesn't reliably get the pelican legs on both sides of the frame.\n- In terms of cost, Astra may be around twice the price of Sol ($10/million input, $50/million output, compared to $5/$30 for Sol), but it uses significantly less tokens at each of the levels, making the prices at the different levels closer than they might otherwise be.\n- Astra low produces a better pelican than ANY of the GPT-5.6 Sol models at any level, for 9.55 cents. Spending 10 cents on any other model gets a much worse result.\n- Look at the input token counts: Astra and Luna both used 16 input tokens, Sol and Terra used 26. That's interesting.\n\nI wonder if Astra and Luna are more related to each other than OpenAI let on?\n\nTags: [ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai), [openai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/openai), [generative-ai](https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai), [llms](https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms), [pelican-riding-a-bicycle](https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle), [gpt-6-astra](https://simonwillison.net/tags/gpt-6-astra)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pelican-comparison-grid-for-astra-is-pretty-interesting", "canonical_source": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/4/astra-pelicans/", "published_at": "2026-09-04 23:59:05+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-07 22:01:02.210202+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "large-language-models", "ai-products"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "GPT-6 Astra", "GPT-5.6 Sol", "GPT-5.6 Terra", "GPT-5.6 Luna", "Simon Willison"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pelican-comparison-grid-for-astra-is-pretty-interesting", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pelican-comparison-grid-for-astra-is-pretty-interesting.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pelican-comparison-grid-for-astra-is-pretty-interesting.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-pelican-comparison-grid-for-astra-is-pretty-interesting.jsonld"}}