alt Hacker NewsGPT-6 Luna being half the price of GPT-5.6 Luna is a really big deal.
Here's GPT-6 Luna pelicans: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
And GPT-6 Sol: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
Scroll to the bottom for the GPT-6 Sol max one: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
For comparison, here are the pelicans I got for GPT-6 Astra: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht... - I still like the Astra Max one best.
Here's a comparison grid showing all of the GPT-6 and GPT-5.6 pelicans at all effort levels: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6.h...
The grid is actually really interesting, because it shows that the 5.6 family default to brighter colors than the 6 family.
Replies
Simon, love your work, one piece of minor feedback for the individual model pages is to make the font of the model name potentially bigger than (and above) the conversation id (which means nothing to the audience) "2026-09-22T18:28:00 conversation: 01m355zvyw8946qyraa8zpz6h9 id: 01m355zvyx47zxx5c6q6b3fg0m#".
I had all the tabs open individually and harder to scan which model is which... otherwise keep up the great work! I like the grid view a lot. (Also the pages have no OG images set, which impacts what the link looks like shared)...
What I overwhelmingly love about that Pelican grid is the two best ones, they've put a neck scarf on to show speed and wind.
I find it very interesting that for both these models we such a clear progression of better images with higher thinking levels from 'hardly useful' to 'pretty nice'. I feel on many other models low and max are much closer.
Not that this benchmark is super relevant anymore but these look worse than I expected.
It's surprising but MiMo V2.6 Pro performs better and is cheaper than GPT 6 Sol on my benchmark[1]. Open weight models are really snapping at the heels of the major western models.
Wow I cannot believe Luna is getting even cheaper. IMO this is the model that is going to change the world.
Everyone said tokens were too expensive but these are getting close to free while still having fantastic performance.
> GPT-6 Luna being half the price of GPT-5.6 Luna is a really big deal.
Is it? It was already too cheap to meter for me. Luna 6 is actually worse on some benchmarks than 5.6. I’d have loved improved performance for 2x the price than ~equal performance for 0.5x the price.
What's with the radial spokes? When are we gonna start seeing proper cross lacing?
How come the pelicans get older with more reasoning? Is GPT 6 taunting us with our mortality?
I've been sharing that pelican grid in my circles a whole bunch, it's great! I think only one data point is missing, generation speed. Would be interesting to see how the reasoning level/token counts relate to speed.
Many of them still get the layers wrong.
They put both legs on the same side of the bike.
Even Astra max which actually put one leg on each side of the bike still somehow messed it up because when it added the bike chain, it put the left leg between the bike chain and the frame.
looks like they're positioning luna to tackle the low-cost cn models
> Error: Gist API returned 403
Is what I'm getting on the top two links.
The sol max looks like it's absolutely ripped for some reason
It's funny that even Astra doesn't know you ride a bike by straddling it between your legs. (EDIT: Oh, I guess Max gets the occlusion. But it doesn't realize it has to pick direction the knee bends in.)
> half the price of GPT-5.6 Luna
Half the price when it launched, or after the price dropped by 75%?
Is GPT-6 50% cheaper?
> GPT‑6 Luna vs. GPT‑5.6 Luna | $0.20 → $0.10 | $1.20 → $0.50 | 50% cheaper
I can read it as follows (below), meaning that GPT-5.6 is 50% cheaper.
- GPT-6 = $0.20
- GPT-5.6 = $0.10
If you're happy with letting Meta train on you, Muse Spark 1.3 Contributor pricing is a much better deal than Luna
> GPT-6 Luna being half the price of GPT-5.6 Luna is a really big deal.
good god
That GPT-6 Sol max pelican looks… so old and depressed.
Is Luna (on "low" thinking) the first left handed model?
out of curiosity, do you retry the same model multiple times to see the range of output it comes up with? or is it purely a 1-shot test
Out of all of the benchmarks out there, pelican bicycle bench is the only one I care about. Thank you Simon.
My new sub-benchmark is which combinations achieve the hook at the end of the upper beak. Right now just 4: Astra Max, XHigh and Medium; GPT 6 Sol Max
When the Astra one was last time run? It's probably better to run these 2-4 weeks after release when models get nerfed to get idea of performance closer to what it is.
Do you have a page showing all the pelicans you've ever created? Could be fun to browse - kinda like https://progress.openai.com/ but visual. (It's a shame they don't keep it updated)
I'm so tired of looking at benchmarks. I always look fwd to the pelicans.
What I like about the grid of SVGs is from I can see that Astra high seems to yield similar quality and price to Sol 6 max.
And Astra medium seems to yield similar or better quality for the same price as Sol 6 xhigh.
Looking at this, AI still has a long way to go. In Sol Max, the pelican's legs are missing on one side—how can one side have two pedals and two legs...
6-luna is at the pareto for most of the tasks! I dont know how they make money here but its insane value from a closed source model. I'd go further and say it makes no sense (privacy, sovereignty etc aside) to use many other models as its not only expensive but also many providers don't have that much GPUs to serve at a significant volume. https://openrouter.ai/rankings?view=month#top-models 5.6 luna is already the most used model this month.