Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview
Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 47.9 on the Noometry Index. Step 5 Preview costs 7.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
StepFunSummary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Step 5 Preview in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Claude Opus 4.6 leads 61.9 to 41.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ProofBench: 50% for Claude Opus 4.6 and 42% for Step 5 Preview.
- Step 5 Preview is cheaper at $1 / $2.70 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.6.
- Step 5 Preview accepts more context: 1.02M tokens versus 1M.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 58.2 | 47.9 |
| Released | 2026-02-04 | 2026-09-16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 1.02M |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $1 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $2.70 |
| Results tracked | 68 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.2 (#20), Step 5 Preview: 51.8 (#36)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1547 | 1564 |
| LMArena Coding | 1536 | 1480 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.7% | — |
| FrontierCode | 26.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 75.6% | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 72% | — |
| SciCode | — | 58.9% |
| GSO | 41.2% | — |
| WeirdML | 78% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 996.5 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.47 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.6: 51.1 (#4), Step 5 Preview: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 79.8% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 46.3% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 4.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 27.3% | — |
| Cybench | 93% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 55.3% | — |
| GBAEval | 44.1% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1253 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 78.9% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 8,018 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.8 (#23), Step 5 Preview: 40.0 (#57)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1527 | 1465 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 69.2% | — |
| SimpleBench | 67.6% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 92.1% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 94% | — |
| CritPt | — | 20.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | 17% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 7.6% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 80.6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 12.7% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 25% | — |
| DTBench | 91.2% | — |
| LMCA | 55.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 155.24 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 63.0 (#31), Step 5 Preview: 46.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | 50% | 42% |
| LMArena Math | 1519 | 1470 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 66% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 26.8% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 78.5% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 94.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 40.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 22.9% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 61.9 (#26), Step 5 Preview: 41.2 (#112)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1546 | 1470 |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.5% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 34.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 47% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.2% | — |
Multimodal Step 5 Preview leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 37.3 (#74), Step 5 Preview: 41.0 (#41)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1316 | 1267 |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1507 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 57.9 (#6), Step 5 Preview: 53.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1489 | 1432 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1551 | 1519 |
| LMArena Russian | 1497 | 1436 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1510 | 1439 |
| LMArena French | 1513 | — |
| LMArena German | 1502 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1484 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1464 | — |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 79.5 (#4), Step 5 Preview: 76.0 (#50)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1523 | 1444 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 48.1 (#13), Step 5 Preview: 44.5 (#64)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1520 | 1455 |
| CL-bench | 20.7% | — |
| CL-bench Life | 17% | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.6 leads
Claude Opus 4.6: 73.5 (#10), Step 5 Preview: 62.8 (#71)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1503 | 1442 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1505 | 1410 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1513 | 1447 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1809 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1223 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Step 5 Preview?
Claude Opus 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 58.2 to 47.9 on the Noometry Index. Step 5 Preview costs 7.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.6 or Step 5 Preview?
Step 5 Preview is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $2.70 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.6 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Step 5 Preview better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 57.2 versus 51.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Step 5 Preview does, with 1.02M tokens against 1M.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.6 and Step 5 Preview share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.6 has 68 scored results on Noometry and Step 5 Preview has 18.