Is GPT-6 Astra a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats GPT-6 Astra on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
10 undominated of 142 · Nov 5, 2026
As of Nov 5, 2026, GPT-6 Astra is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. GPT-5.5 scores 25.6 higher and costs 44% less, with a covering envelope. 10 of 142 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
GPT-5.5 is both better and cheaper than GPT-6 Astra: 25.6 points higher on LMArena and 44% less per million tokens, $8.75 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1441.2
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$20.00/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1466.8
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$11.25/M
GPT-6 Astra takes file, image, text, returns up to 128,000 tokens from a 1,050,000-token context, and is listed by 8 sellers.
Compared against 142 rated, priced models on this lens: 5 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. GPT-6 Astra scores 1441.2 at $20.00 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.5 | 1466.8 +25.6 | $11.25/M | 44% |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | 1457.2 +16.0 | $8.00/M | 60% |
| GPT-5.4 | 1452.5 +11.3 | $5.63/M | 72% |
| GPT-5.6 Terra | 1448.3 +7.1 | $4.50/M | 78% |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 1445.6 +4.4 | $4.00/M | 80% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 4 Argon | 1528.6 | $8.00/M | context |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | 1515.8 | $8.00/M | context |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | 1513.8 | $20.00/M | context |
| Claude Opus 5 | 1504.1 | $10.00/M | context |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 1501.7 | $10.00/M | context |
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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