Ask HN: Is GPT-6 Astra worth the 2.5x cost increase over GPT-5.6 Sol?

Comments on social media (when discounting the ironic posts) are mixed whether Astra is worth the cost increase, similar to the Fable-Opus transition.

For the novel projects I'm working on, Astra did unblock me where I was stuck with GPT 5.6 Sol, which in itself gives it value for myself, but outside of that it's not a significant improvement if at all. I have noticed Astra is more efficient so for my use case it may not be 2.5x cost.

7 points | by minimaxir 1 day ago

5 comments

  • ipaddr 20 hours ago
    For the average person on here no. In fact 5.6 is probably unneeded. What DeepSeek 731 flash offers most wouldn't need anything else.

    I use to want to use the best model because I wanted the highest quality output but they all produce that now. If you are trying to understand an ancient language humans don't or solve a math mystery or fixing old undocumented firmware maybe. If you are trying to create a react app or backend I wouldn't bother.

    The rule of thumb is if Stack overflow could answer your question don't bother with Astra or Sol.

  • PaulShin 7 hours ago
    Charge up and use a deep prompt, just like when using an ultimate ability in a game.
  • runjake 1 day ago
    It depends on what you're having the agent work on, but in most cases no.
  • speedgoose 1 day ago
    It’s pretty good at CAD.
  • kelvintestsai 9 hours ago
    [flagged]