GPT-6 Astra costs 40x more than DeepSeek for 0.1 benchmark point
alex_verem · x · 2026-09-15
A pricing analysis points out that OpenAI charges $50 per million output tokens for GPT-6 Astra, while DeepSeek charges $1.20 for DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash—yet on the one coding benchmark where both published scores for the same version, the models are just 0.1 points apart. That's 40x the price for a negligible gap.
The core question: if you're paying for Astra, what are you getting that open models can't do? For most work, nothing you'd notice; the exceptions are real but specific enough to name. Every figure in the piece meets a strict test—both the developer and OpenAI published a score on the same benchmark version, sourced from official model cards, READMEs and launch posts. The author suggests sorting your own workload into types before deciding whether frontier closed models are worth paying for.
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