Playground · Drawing · SVG · Standing test
A map of the world from memory
Drawing the world from memory is a test of geographic knowledge more than of drawing skill. With no data to copy, a model has to recall the outline of every coast as a sequence of coordinates and keep the continents in the right places relative to each other. It is also an easy test to check: a missing Madagascar, a Mediterranean that has closed up or an ocean label sitting on Australia is obvious at a glance. Look at the shapes of Africa, South America, Australia, India and Europe, at whether the seas between them are still open, and at where the ocean names have been placed.
The prompt, word for word
Draw a map of the world in SVG, from memory: all the continents, with the outlines as accurate as you can make them, and the oceans labelled.
Every answer runs live, in a sandboxed frame. Click into one to play with it.
How each model did
| Model | Our notes | Checks | Time | Output tokens | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6.1 Sol | A clean equirectangular map with detailed coasts: Scandinavia and the Baltic, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Japan, the Philippines, New Guinea, New Zealand and a scatter of Caribbean and Pacific islands. The Black Sea and Caspian are missing, and the second "PACIFIC OCEAN" label has been placed over New Guinea and the islands around it rather than open water.
|
3.5 of 4 | 183 s | 8,929 306 thinking |
$0.089 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 Our pick | A tidy atlas-style map with a graticule, the Equator and the Tropics drawn in, and recognisable outlines throughout, including the Black Sea, Caspian, Red Sea, Hudson Bay and the Antarctic Peninsula. All five oceans are labelled in open water (the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern more than once), along with seas such as the Bay of Bengal and Tasman Sea. The only flaws are in the small text: "Gulf of Mexico" runs onto Florida and "SOUTH AMERICA" runs past the coast. | 4 of 4 | 305 s | 29,924 22,878 thinking |
$0.599 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | The most complete map. The outlines are as good as Opus's, and it adds Lake Victoria, Lake Baikal, the Caspian, a white Antarctica and twelve named seas, from the Bering Sea to the Tasman Sea. The ocean labels sit in open water and in the right places. The only flaws are in the labels: "Sea of Japan" runs onto Japan, and the large "NORTH AMERICA" and "SOUTH AMERICA" spill over their coasts. | 4 of 4 | 474 s | 38,533 27,619 thinking |
$1.927 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | A dark "desk reference" map with a compass rose, made of angular polygons. The Americas, India and Australia are recognisable, but Africa is drawn overlapping Eurasia, so there is no Mediterranean: its label sits on solid land, as do the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and East China Sea labels. South America runs into the Antarctic Peninsula. The ocean names themselves are in the right places.
|
3 of 4 | 164 s | 20,392 11,301 thinking |
$0.076 |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | A plain, very simplified map. Africa, South America and Australia are recognisable, and Madagascar, Japan and New Zealand are there, but Europe is a block with no Scandinavia and Central America is a rectangle. It has no continent names, and the "SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN" label is printed across South America.
|
3 of 4 | 115 s | 12,892 10,776 thinking |
$0.055 |
| Grok 4.7 | A framed map titled "The World", with a caption explaining why the Pacific appears at both edges. The coasts are coarse polygons: Britain is a hexagon, Europe has no Scandinavia, the Red Sea is a wide bay, Africa meets Spain so the Mediterranean is closed, and New Guinea overlaps Australia's north coast. Greenland is a white octagon overlapping Canada. The six ocean labels are all in the right water.
|
3.5 of 4 | 328 s | 18,550 15,906 thinking |
$0.112 |
| Kimi K3 | A good map on its second try (the first ran out of tokens). It has well-shaped continents, the Great Lakes, Black Sea and Caspian, Madagascar, Japan, Indonesia, New Guinea and New Zealand, with the Antarctic Peninsula reaching up towards South America. Scandinavia is joined to Finland with the Baltic as an inlet, which is close enough. The five oceans are each labelled once, in the right places.Took 2 tries: ran out of room at 64,000 tokens; finished at 128,000 tokens. | 4 of 4 | 1732 s | 106,072 99,709 thinking |
$1.230 $2.094 all tries |
| Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Broken, even after a second try. In 39 of the land paths the outline data was written after the closing title tag instead of inside the path element, so no continent is drawn. The page shows a dark ocean with labels, a compass rose, a scale bar, a few lakes and some tiny islands. The labels are roughly where the oceans would be, but with no land to place them against, and "NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN" is cut off at the left edge.Took 2 tries: ran out of room at 64,000 tokens; finished at 128,000 tokens.
|
0.5 of 4 | 2052 s | 94,527 80,841 thinking |
$0.567 $0.952 all tries |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Made in 29 seconds, and it looks it: the continents are smooth blobs, with North America drawn as a curved wedge, Africa as a teardrop and Australia as an oval. A chain of islands joins Asia to Australia, and Africa overlaps Europe. Labels are misplaced: "PACIFIC OCEAN" is written across Australia, "ATLANTIC OCEAN" crosses the top of South America, and the Mediterranean and Red Sea labels sit on land.
|
2 of 4 | 29 s | 10,561 7,683 thinking |
$0.013 |
| Mistral Large 4 | A bright, cartoon-like map with a compass rose and Great Lakes. Africa, South America, India and Australia are drawn well. Europe is weaker: Scandinavia is fused to the mainland, with the Baltic as a large enclosed lake, and the Black Sea and Caspian are plain ellipses. The eastern "PACIFIC OCEAN" label is placed across Borneo and Sulawesi rather than east of New Guinea.
|
3 of 4 | 570 s | 48,498 30,121 thinking |
$0.101 |
One answer per model, at each model's default settings unless the card says otherwise, through OpenRouter. If an answer ran out of room or stopped short, we asked again with more room, then with thinking off, and say so. We tried every answer, with Claude Opus 5.5 running the checks and drafting the notes; it is an Anthropic model, so we check its calls on Claude answers ourselves. This is a quick look, not a benchmark: run it again and every answer will differ. For measured results, see our benchmarks.
What we checked, by trying each answer ourselves: All seven continents are there (Antarctica may be a strip); Outlines are recognisable (Africa, South America, Australia, India, Europe); Continents are where they should be relative to each other; Oceans are labelled in the right places. A partial pass counts as half.
Verdict
Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol and Kimi K3 all drew maps that read as the world at a glance, with recognisable Africa, South America, India and Australia, and the islands most people would look for. Our pick is Claude Opus 5.5: clean, accurate outlines with the Black Sea, Caspian and Hudson Bay in place and every ocean label in open water, for $0.60. Fable's map adds lakes and named seas and is just as accurate, but took 474 seconds and cost $1.93. GPT-6.1 Sol has the most islands and cost only $0.09 in 183 seconds, but it leaves out the Black Sea and Caspian and puts one Pacific label over New Guinea. Kimi needed two tries; the one that finished took 1,732 seconds and cost $1.23.
Grok, Mistral, Gemini and Muse Spark drew coarser outlines, and Gemini and Grok both closed up the Mediterranean. DeepSeek's blobs were the fastest answer (29 seconds, $0.01), but it put the Pacific label on Australia. Qwen produced no continents at all: even on its second try (2,052 seconds), a markup error left every land outline empty.
What would your prompt get?The Spring Prompt playground runs one prompt on up to six models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral and others, side by side.
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