Is GPT-6 Astra Law SOTA?

As of Nov 3, 2026, GPT-6 Astra Law is pending benchmarks on isitsota: announced Sep 17, 2026, with no independent results on the boards we track yet.

Pending benchmarksTracking since Oct 31, 2026

Is GPT-6 Astra Law state of the art?Pending benchmarks.Announced Sep 17, 2026; no independent results yet.

OpenAI's legal configuration of GPT-6 Astra, announced on September 17, 2026 as Astra for Law. OpenAI describes it as GPT-6 Astra combined with a legal search index and instructions for legal analysis and writing, not as a separately trained model. It is offered to selected law firms through Trusted Access in ChatGPT and Codex; OpenAI said API access as gpt-6-astra-law was coming soon, and its API pricing page now lists that id at $10 input and $50 output per 1M tokens. It was announced six weeks before we began tracking it. No open weights.

Announced facts

The details so far

Lab: OpenAI
Announced: Sep 17, 2026
API: Waitlist
Open weights: Closed · Not released
Announcement status: Announced by OpenAI on Sep 17, 2026 (Introducing Astra for Law); not a new, unannounced model
API model ID: gpt-6-astra-law (named in the Sep 17 announcement and listed on the OpenAI API pricing page); no API changelog entry as of Oct 31, 2026
What it is: GPT-6 Astra plus a legal search index and instructions for legal analysis and writing; OpenAI's pricing page lists it under Legal model configurations
Legal search index: U.S. case law, statutes, regulations, court rules and administrative decisions across more than 230 million URLs, including the Free Law Project's CourtListener case-law collection
Access: Trusted Access Program for eligible law firms in ChatGPT and Codex; shown in the model picker as GPT-6 Astra Law; API listed as coming soon in the announcement
Price (OpenAI API): $10 input, $1 cached input, $50 output per 1M tokens; promotional pricing available at least through Dec 31, 2026
Weights relation: Uses GPT-6 Astra; OpenAI does not describe separate training for this configuration

Tags marked unsure are not stated on the lab's own pages.

Next steps

What would let us call it

Verdicts use only independent boards we already track. Two consecutive snapshots are required before any crown.

Publicly announced with a source
Usable by the public (API or weights)
Listed on an independent board we track
Enough results for a rank in a category
Holds across two snapshots (crowns only)

Self-reported

What the lab claims

Self-reported. Shown for context; not used in any verdict.

Lab claim: on 200 U.S. legal research questions from the private validation set of Vals AI's Legal Research Bench, at the highest reasoning effort, it passed the overall correctness check on 54.0% of questions, vs 38.7% for GPT-6 Astra using web search alone.

Lab claim: on case-law-focused questions it found 24% more reference cases than GPT-6 Astra with web search alone, and retrieved up to 54% more relevant passages from the correct court opinions at the same reasoning effort.

Receipts

Sources

LABIntroducing Astra for Law (OpenAI)openai.com/index/astra-for-law/ · Sep 17, 2026 LABOpenAI API pricing: legal model configurationsdevelopers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing

Editorial

Compare when it lands

Unscored: GPT-6 Astra, the model it configures. A scored comparison appears once both are on a shared board.

Family

Part of the GPT-6 family

See every GPT-6 model side by side: GPT-6 family.

Browse releases RSS Share JSON

Tracking ends Jan 29, 2027 unless the API or weights become available.