# OpenAI advances coding in low-resource languages

> OpenAI's new models improve COBOL, Fortran and Visual Basic coding with higher accuracy and lower costs.
- Title: OpenAI advances coding in low-resource languages · OpenAI
- Summary: OpenAI's new models improve COBOL, Fortran and Visual Basic coding with higher accuracy and lower costs. OpenAI's latest models achieve 86.6% accuracy in…
- Keywords: openai, cobol, fortran, visual basic, gpt-6, code migration, api cost, sqlite, technology, advances, coding, low-resource
- Source: OpenAI — https://openai.com/index/low-resource-programming-languages
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: openai, cobol, fortran, visual basic, gpt-6, code migration, api cost, sqlite, ai, technology
## Low-resource languages critical for infrastructure
COBOL supports 40% of online banking systems, 80% of credit card transactions and 95% of atm transactions globally.
## AI struggles with legacy codebases
Developers report coding models often struggle with low-resource languages like cobol and fortran.
## MultiLangBench evaluation
GPT-6 Astra achieves 87.4% test pass rate across 20 languages, up from 26.8% for GPT-5.6 Sol.
## COBOL migration results
GPT-6.1 Sol achieves 86.6% accuracy at low reasoning effort, 39% cheaper than GPT-5.6 Sol.
## Cost efficiency improvements
GPT-6 Luna reaches 40.3% accuracy at 78% lower estimated api cost than GPT-5.6 Sol.
## Behavior preservation in migration
Migrating COBOL programs requires preserving business logic and language-specific behaviors like rounding rules.
## OpenAI releases evaluation tools
OpenAI shares MultiLangBench test suite and results for developers to inspect and identify gaps.
## Next steps for enterprise software
Teams can use OpenAI's API to try coding tasks in their preferred languages while providing feedback.
## Key takeaway

OpenAI's latest models achieve 86.6% accuracy in migrating COBOL code while costing 39% less than previous versions.