# OpenAI Astra

7 Hacker News commenters recommended OpenAI Astra and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a capable model for feature work, but critics say it got worse after release, is very expensive to run, and its results were held back.

## Why people recommend it

- Capable on feature work (2 comments): "very capable for this kind of feature" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49786351)) "Astra is a pretty good model" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49898764))

## What people warn about

- Very expensive to run (3 comments): "it's incredibly expensive relative to the other tasks that come after this" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251262)) "this model needed 10,000 agents, $20M of compute, and the assistance of a whole team of people at OpenAI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49649883)) "Now it's dumb af and token use is insane." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49796526))
- Results withheld, safety concerns (4 comments): "they should have pulled it. As they haven't, the obvious conclusion is that safety isn't the main driver here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906223)) "Rather than sitting on these results until they had enough for a "shock and awe" 10-result dump" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49144087)) "OpenAI sat on the results so they could drop 10 at a time." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49144472))
- Worse quality than at release (3 comments): "it really doesn't work as good as day of release anymore" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49859540)) "the results are absolutelty trash compared to release" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49856406)) "Now it's dumb af and token use is insane." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49796526))
- Loses context and fakes code (2 comments): "6 Astra lost the most key details of a project across a compaction and got confused about what we were actually trying to do" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915937)) "Astra was still stubbing out and faking critical parts of the implementation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49897552))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Claude Opus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-opus.md): 3331 recommend
- [OpenAI GPT](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-5.md): 1205 recommend
- [Claude Sonnet](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-sonnet.md): 854 recommend
- [DeepSeek V4 Flash](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-v4-flash.md): 828 recommend
- [Fable](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fable.md): 823 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "OpenAI Astra", https://hackerapproved.com/p/openai-astra/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).