Astraios vs PixInsight
A fair comparison between a free alpha program and the most established commercial astrophotography suite. Checked against official sources on : Astraios 0.1.25 (v0.1.25-alpha) and PixInsight 1.9.4 "Lockhart". PixInsight's site refused automated access on the day of checking, so its price, trial and system requirements were taken from search-engine copies of the official pages and the official developer forum; verify on pixinsight.com before relying on exact wording.
Short version. Choose PixInsight for maturity, depth and an ecosystem of plugins and tutorials. Choose Astraios if you want a free, local-first, GPU-accelerated tool with a guided workflow and built-in deconvolution and AI denoise, and you accept alpha-quality software. Similar feature names do not mean equal results.
| Astraios 0.1.25 (alpha) | PixInsight 1.9.4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price and licence | Free, GPL-3.0-or-later | 300 EUR plus VAT where applicable, proprietary, licensed to a named person; 45-day trial (FAQ, trial) |
| Platforms | Windows, Linux, macOS (Apple Silicon native via Metal) | Windows, Linux, macOS; 1.9.4 is the first native Apple Silicon build and needs macOS 15 or newer |
| Maturity | Alpha, first release 2026, one maintainer | Commercial since 2007, mature, large user base and plugin ecosystem |
| Core-engine GPU acceleration | CUDA and Apple Metal for registration, stacking, deconvolution, denoising, stretching and AI; CPU fallback | Not documented in the core as of 1.9.4; GPU use in the ecosystem comes from third-party paid plugins |
| AI denoise | Built in, bundled Noise2Self model | Not built in; NoiseXTerminator by RC Astro, separate purchase (rc-astro.com) |
| AI or star-aware deconvolution | Classical Richardson-Lucy, spatially varying and multi-frame deconvolution built in; no AI model | Classical deconvolution built in; BlurXTerminator (AI) is a separate purchase (rc-astro.com) |
| Star removal | Built-in morphological remover; StarNet optional (external) | StarNet 2 or StarXTerminator (paid) as plugins |
| Calibration, registration, stacking | Built in; batch preprocessing, drizzle, multi-session, live stacking | Built in (WeightedBatchPreprocessing, ImageIntegration, drizzle) |
| Plate solving and colour calibration | Offline local Gaia DR3, ASTAP, astrometry.net; PCC, SPCC, SFCC | Built-in solver and catalogs; PCC and SPCC (PixInsight originated SPCC) |
| Scripting | Python console, macros, plugins | PixelMath and JavaScript (PJSR) |
| Guided step-by-step workflow | Yes (Guided Processing, Smart Processor) | No wizard; process icons and containers |
| Non-destructive history | Yes, replayable and exportable | Process history and containers |
| Planetary lucky imaging | SER stacking, de-rotation, projection | Not documented in the core (commonly done in other tools) |
| Documentation and support | Docs in the repository, Discussions | Reference documentation, official forum, many third-party tutorials |
About GPU claims
"GPU acceleration" is only meaningful with a definition. Here it means the program's own processing engine running on the GPU. By that definition PixInsight's core does not document GPU use as of 1.9.4, while RC Astro's plugins (StarXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator) do use the GPU inside the plugin; they are separate products (59.95 to 99.95 USD each on rc-astro.com on the day of checking). Astraios runs its own engine on CUDA or Apple Metal for the stages listed on the benchmarks page and on the CPU for the rest, with the same output either way.
What Astraios does not have
- Years of refinement: PixInsight's algorithms and interface have been tuned since 2004; Astraios is months old.
- An ecosystem: no third-party plugins, few tutorials, no forum beyond GitHub Discussions.
- Camera raw support and code-signed installers.
Sources: PixInsight developer forum, PixInsight FAQ, RC Astro software, Astraios project facts.