GPT-6 Astra on OpenRouter

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...

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.

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.

$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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

is Azure for this actually ZDR?

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?

I got it, but sadly no resets...

Damn I am so hyped

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Invoking simonw for pelicans pretty please.

is it finally available on openrouter and what about fable 5.1