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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It's simonw. It's interesting to see their pelican benchmark, another comment by a different author elsewhere here shows some very good SVG generation too.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?
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.
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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.
There was a HN post that tested this hypothesis a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010129
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?
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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
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
Astra is the only model that correctly depicts occlusion of crank and leg, although interestingly, at max and medium levels (not in between).
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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.
Astra pelican looks amazing: it looks like it was made by a professional artist. All the others look like they were made by kindergartners.
Interesting that all of the bikes are turquoise colored, except for the medium effort
Oh my goodness. I was not prepared for Luna on "none".
Reminded me of https://clocks.brianmoore.com/
Haiku the GOAT
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.
I have a feeling they've been doing that for a while now, even if unintentional, as it's such a well known benchmark
radial spokes on the back wheel is not a thing irl. i wonder if any model has gotten that right?
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
But pelicans are almost never accompanied by helmets, so it cancels out.
> Biking is almost always accompanied by helmets
Isnt Netherlands the leader in bike riders and they dont wear helmets.
At least one reasoning trace I saw considered a helmet and discarded the idea because it was worried about obscuring some detail
Fallen off the homepage so what? I genuinely don't understand
Luna is my go to daily model it's great value
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
Mine as well, it’s fast and keeps me in flow; and cheap!
Luna's price seems off
The price is probably coming from when Luna was first released. OpenAI slashed the price by 80% at the end of July.
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How are we supposed to know if Astra is frontier without the pelican?
It's simonw. It's interesting to see their pelican benchmark, another comment by a different author elsewhere here shows some very good SVG generation too.
It's absolutely related.
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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.
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.
I thought all the designers have been using vector graphics for a long time now.
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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.
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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.
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-...
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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/
I've replaced "Score" there with model ranking, to reduce confusion, thanks for the feedback!
The Astra one looks pretty good except it's standing on the wrong side of the table
Its also available finally to Pro users! Just took 24 hours.
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
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!
That's a pretty genius internal incentive to move fast.
> 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.
Just got access to it on Plus plan in Australia. 2 Banked resets as well.
Played in codex app a couple of hours today: it feels much faster than SOL, even if the TPS is half of it.
Just got it. European plus user here. Only codex, no chatgpt
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.
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.
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?
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.
They’re ZDR and the OAI ones aren’t
WTHIT?
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Compared to OpenAI flex? I'm pretty sure that is their batch processing endpoint, which is naturally cheaper.
I got it, but sadly no resets...
Damn I am so hyped
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You made an account just to post this?
Invoking simonw for pelicans pretty please.
That's over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49570643
is it finally available on openrouter and what about fable 5.1
that's literally what the link is for...