GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-5.6 Sol

GPT-5.6 Sol comes out ahead on 8 of 14 shared measures, and the two rank 7 and 12 of 51 overall. GPT-5.6 Sol is 2.5× cheaper per million tokens (blended) — A$19.65 vs A$49.14 per 1,000 replies of customer support replys.

GPT-6 ASTRA #7GPT-5.6 SOL #12UPDATED 23 SEP 2026
§ 01 — AT A GLANCE

Where each one wins.

Overall

GPT-6 Astra ranks 7th of 51; GPT-5.6 Sol ranks 12th.

Coding

GPT-6 Astra ranks 2nd of 42; GPT-5.6 Sol ranks 7th.

Agents

GPT-6 Astra ranks 2nd of 41; GPT-5.6 Sol ranks 6th.

Reasoning

GPT-6 Astra ranks 3rd of 51; GPT-5.6 Sol ranks 7th.

Long context

GPT-5.6 Sol ranks 6th of 51; GPT-6 Astra ranks 23rd.

Value

GPT-5.6 Sol ranks 22nd of 50; GPT-6 Astra ranks 23rd.

Price

GPT-5.6 Sol is 2.5× cheaper per million tokens (blended) — A$19.65 vs A$49.14 per 1,000 replies of customer support replys.

Speed

GPT-5.6 Sol writes 1.1× faster (62 tok/s vs 54 tok/s).

Australia

Both can be used from Australia through OpenAI’s own API, which may process requests outside Australia. GPT-6 Astra can be called from AWS Bedrock in Sydney and Microsoft Azure in Australia East, but only through global routing, so requests may be processed outside Australia. GPT-5.6 Sol can be called from AWS Bedrock in Sydney and Melbourne and Microsoft Azure in Australia East, but only through global routing, so requests may be processed outside Australia.

§ 02 — EVERY MEASURE

Side by side.

“Level” means the gap is inside LMArena’s confidence interval, or the scores are identical. Independent test scores are for each model’s headline setting. Both models can be used from Australia through their makers’ APIs; the Australian rows show whether requests can also be processed in Australia.

BENCHMARKS, SPEED AND AVAILABILITY23 SEP 2026
GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-5.6 Sol: benchmark results
BENCHMARKGPT-6 ASTRAGPT-5.6 SOLLEADS
AA Intelligence Index52.747.0GPT-6 Astra
AA Coding Index76.977.4GPT-5.6 Sol
GPQA Diamond96.1%94.1%GPT-6 Astra
Humanity’s Last Exam54.7%49.5%GPT-6 Astra
AA-LCR80.7%84.0%GPT-5.6 Sol
Terminal-Bench 2.188.4%88.0%GPT-6 Astra
τ²-Bench (banking)41.4%44.3%GPT-5.6 Sol
SciCode56.5%57.1%GPT-5.6 Sol
LMArena Text14801484Level
LMArena WebDev17931617GPT-6 Astra
LMArena Vision12841286Level
LMArena Document14731489Level
LMArena Search1256
LMArena Agent#2#7GPT-6 Astra
Blended price (AUD)A$28.08A$11.23GPT-5.6 Sol
Output speed54 tok/s62 tok/sGPT-5.6 Sol
Answer starts after3.4 min1.0 minGPT-5.6 Sol
Context window1,050,000 tokens1,050,000 tokensLevel
USE FROM AUSTRALIA
Maker’s APIYESYES
Processed in AustraliaNONO
AUSTRALIAN CLOUD REGIONS
AWS Bedrock · SydneyGLOBALGLOBAL
AWS Bedrock · MelbourneNOT IN AUGLOBAL
Azure · Australia EastGLOBALGLOBAL
Google Vertex AI · SydneyNOT OFFEREDNOT OFFERED
§ 03 — COST

The same jobs, in Australian dollars.

List prices at the snapshot’s RBA rate, excluding GST and reasoning tokens.

EVERYDAY JOBSESTIMATES
Estimated cost of common jobs in Australian dollars
JOBGPT-6 ASTRAGPT-5.6 SOLMEDIAN MODEL
Customer support replyPER 1,000 REPLIESA$49.14A$19.65A$6.58
Summarise a 30-page documentPER 100 DOCUMENTSA$33.69A$13.48A$4.74
Agentic coding taskPER 10 TASKSA$26.67A$10.67A$3.72
§ 05 — QUESTIONS

GPT-6 Astra or GPT-5.6 Sol?

On our overall leaderboard GPT-6 Astra ranks 7th and GPT-5.6 Sol 12th of 51. Which is better depends on the job: the table above compares each benchmark, price and Australian availability.

GPT-5.6 Sol, at A$11.23 per million tokens (blended) against A$28.08 for GPT-6 Astra. Reasoning-heavy settings add output tokens, so real bills depend on the effort level you run.

Both can be used from Australia through OpenAI’s own API, which may process requests outside Australia. GPT-6 Astra can be called from AWS Bedrock in Sydney and Microsoft Azure in Australia East, but only through global routing, so requests may be processed outside Australia. GPT-5.6 Sol can be called from AWS Bedrock in Sydney and Melbourne and Microsoft Azure in Australia East, but only through global routing, so requests may be processed outside Australia.

PUT THE COMPARISON TO WORK

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