Particle-1 vs Pareto 26.9
Particle-1 took 7 min 13 s and $0.056 at list price, Pareto 26.9 took 10 min 32 s and $0.34 at list price. Pareto 26.9 took 1.5× as long and cost 6.0× as much.
Particle-1
Particle AI · $0.50/M out · 18 HN pts
Pareto 26.9
Unbiased · $7.50/M out
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam dedicated to the repair and restoration of vintage synthesizers. We are engineers, musicians, and collectors who believe these instruments are not museum pieces but tools meant to be played, heard, and trusted on stage or in the studio. Our bench has seen everything from stubborn Moogs and fragile ARP boards to polysynths with corroded traces and keyboards that have traveled too many miles. We approach each repair with patience, documentation, and respect for the original design, while making sensible updates only where reliability demands them. Because we are a small team, you work directly with the person handling your instrument, from the first diagnosis to the final calibration. We also advise on maintenance, source hard-to-find parts, and help you decide when a repair is worthwhile. Patchbay exists to keep old synthesizers making new music.
Patchbay is a small workshop in the heart of Rotterdam, where three people spend their days elbow-deep in the guts of vintage synthesizers. We fix the machines that made the sounds you grew up with—the ones that shaped entire genres and then got left in basements when the tech moved on. But we're not a museum. Our benches are covered in solder, schematics, and the occasional broken key that's been there for two weeks longer than we'd like to admit.
We started this studio because we got tired of seeing classic gear being stripped for parts, or worse, turned into Instagram decor. These instruments deserve better. They were built to make noise, and we want to keep them doing exactly that.
Between the three of us, we've fixed everything from a 1960s Buchla to a beat-up Juno that fell down a flight of stairs. If you've got a synth that's gone quiet, bring it in. We'll bring it back.
Specs and numbers
| Particle-1 | Pareto 26.9 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Particle AI | Unbiased |
| Made in | — | — |
| Released | 28 Oct 2026 | 13 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.05 | $2.50 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.50 | $7.50 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 262,144 tokens |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Hacker News points | 18 | — |
| Time for the six prompts | 7 min 13 s | 10 min 32 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.056 | $0.34 |
Particle-1 was cheaper: $0.28 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Particle-1 was faster: 3 min 19 s less in total, and faster on each of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play. Pareto 26.9's landing page was cut off at the output limit (12,000 tokens).