Pelican Benchmark
What AI models build when asked for a pelican riding a bicycle as a self-contained HTML animation.
The pelican-riding-a-bicycle test was proposed and popularized by Simon Willison. This site collects community submissions; it is not affiliated with him.
The prompt
Create a self-contained HTML file with a 2D SVG animation of a pelican riding a bicyclePaste it into any language model, then submit the HTML file it returns.
Two takes on the same prompt
These submissions record the same prompt but different thinking levels. Open the examples page for reported settings and notes.
About the Animated HTML track
This track keeps the pelican and the bicycle, but asks for a complete HTML file with an animation. Models write the markup, styles and script themselves, so results range from a gently turning wheel to full scenes with their own controls.
- Covers in the grid are still screenshots. Open a result to watch it run.
- Each animation runs as submitted, in a sandbox on a separate domain. We never edit the author’s code.
- The sandbox blocks network requests. Scripts, styles and fonts can load only from a short list of public CDNs (jsDelivr, cdnjs, unpkg, Google Fonts); anything else is blocked, and the result may look broken.
- The site adds no play, pause or speed controls. If a result has controls, the model wrote them.
- On phones, an animation starts only when you tap Play.
How to read these results
Each card is one submission, with details entered by the contributor and not verified by us. There are no scores or rankings here. Answers to common questions are in the FAQ, and how the collection is put together is on the How this collection works page.
Submit your own result
- Copy the prompt above and send it to a model.
- Save the HTML file it returns. Clumsy or odd-looking pelicans are welcome too.
- Upload it with the model, thinking level and the prompt you actually used. No account needed.
Inline everything you can. A file that loads from other hosts may break here, and may be removed if it stops rendering.