GPT-6 Astra vs GPT-6.1 Sol: I Gave Both the Same Lead Funnel Job

I've been building a set of repeatable benchmarks at Clearmud so that every new model gets tested the same way, on the same business problems. Not toy demos. Templates I think a small to mid-size company would use.

This week I pulled one of those templates, a consulting lead funnel for a one to nine person team, and gave the identical prompt to two OpenAI models: GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol. One shot each. No follow-ups, no fixes, no hand-holding. Whatever came out is what we judged.

Here's how it went.

The prompt both models got

The fictional client is Clear Path Operations, an AI consulting business with an owner team of six and about $900K in annual revenue. They sell process audits, automation roadmaps, and implementation sprints to owners and operators of growing service businesses. Today they run on a booking link, a CRM, and shared docs.

The job: turn qualified visitors into booked audit calls and support a clear follow-up journey. The owner still handles sales, scheduling, and most decisions personally, so the whole thing has to run with almost no staff time.

A few constraints I put in on purpose:

• Explain the offer and make the next step obvious
• Establish trust without invented testimonials
• Synthetic data only
• The model picks the design, architecture, and implementation
• Deliver a runnable application with functioning lead capture and persistent data, not a visual mockup

That last line is the one that matters. A pretty landing page is easy. A form that saves a lead and books a call is the test.

Same prompt, two tools

I ran Astra in T3 code on the "extra high" setting, and I ran Sol in a CLI. Same prompt pasted into both, then I fast-forwarded through the boring part.

If you want to see the setup, it starts at [01:33].

The first surprise: 21 minutes vs 34 minutes

Astra finished in 21 minutes and set up a local preview on its own. Sol took 34 minutes and did not set up a local preview at all. I had to spin that up myself on port 5182 while I started reviewing Astra's output.

That's a 13-minute gap on an identical job. Keep that number in mind for the ending.

Astra: solid foundation, bland face

I test these models a lot, and I'm starting to recognize how Astra handles front-end design. It's professional. It's clean. It is also not my preference, and it's starting to look a little boring to me.

To be fair, that's partly a prompt problem, and it's the biggest takeaway from this whole test.

If you're using these models for your business and you have a brand kit, put it in the first prompt. Your logo, your preferred color scheme, your typography, or even an existing website the model can reference. You want it pulling from your brand persona and the way you communicate, not from its own defaults. I didn't give either model any of that here, so I got the defaults.

Now, the part that counts. I walked Astra's audit flow as a test lead:

• Team size, main challenge, contact details, consent
• A date and time picker
• Call confirmation with add-to-calendar

Pretty nifty. Then I opened the owner workspace, which is the back end you'd use to manage everything. I could view call notes, mark a call complete, and watch it drop out of the queue. There was even a "what's on autopilot" section showing which pieces run without the owner touching them.

Small critiques: the text could be larger, I'd love some imagery and a timeline, and the whole thing could use personality. Those are the details you fine-tune after the fact. The structure is what matters, and the structure works.

You can watch the full walkthrough at [03:37].

Sol: personality, and a bug

When Sol's preview finally loaded, the difference was immediate. Different color scheme. Clear, strong calls to action. Refreshingly different from what I'd just seen. On looks alone, I was leaning Sol.

The onboarding was simpler too. Name, email, role, continue. I entered the test lead, got to the consent step, and then I hit the wall.

The consent checkbox could not be clicked. The Next button stayed disabled.

I tried a hard refresh. Still nothing. I tried clicking through the privacy link and coming back. Nothing. I opened it in a new tab. Still couldn't click it.

So the onboarding test stopped there. The one thing the prompt cared about most, functioning lead capture, didn't function. That's the whole scene at [06:46].

And here's what got me. Sol spent 13 more minutes on this build than Astra. For it to have taken longer, I would have expected it to be perfect.

The verdict

For a one-shot build, here's my honest call:

• Sol wins on creative decisions. Better colors, better calls to action, more personality out of the box.
• Astra wins on structural integrity. Every step of the funnel worked, front end and back end, on the first try.

Between the two, Astra works. Sol looks better, but we ran into a bug on the path that matters, and these demos are all about who does the better job up front without a second prompt.

I also believe Astra would have done a far better job on the design if I'd given it a brand kit and creative direction: primary and secondary colors, typography, the works. The bland look is fixable in the prompt. The broken checkbox is a build problem.

What I'd take from this

Don't accept the first result. Both of these are foundations, not finished products. Prompt, review, prompt again.

Put your brand in the first prompt. The model's default taste is not your brand. Hand it your colors, fonts, and an example site before it writes a line of code.

Judge on the job, not the demo. A gorgeous page that can't capture a lead doesn't help a six-person consultancy book audit calls. Test the one path the business depends on before you fall for the design.

Time is not quality. The slower model was not the safer one here.

Which model would you pick for a lead funnel like this? I'm very curious. Tell me in the comments.

And if you want a video built around your specific situation, drop a comment with who you are, what you do, who your target audience is, and what your question is. I'll add a custom-tailored video to the queue.

I'm not an AI expert. I'm building in public and sharing what works.

Watch the full test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S93axlriUOc