Model comparison
Codestral vs Step 5 Preview
Step 5 Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.9 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Step 5 Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 0 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
StepFunSummary
- The widest gap is in coding, where Step 5 Preview leads 51.8 to 27.3.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $2.70 for Step 5 Preview.
- Step 5 Preview accepts more context: 1.02M tokens versus 256K.
Side by side
| Codestral | Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 47.9 |
| Released | 2024-05-29 | 2026-09-16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 256K | 1.02M |
| Max output | 8K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $1 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | $2.70 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Step 5 Preview leads
Codestral: 27.3 (#321), Step 5 Preview: 51.8 (#36)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1564 |
| SciCode | — | 58.9% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1480 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |
Reasoning Step 5 Preview leads
Codestral: 19.8 (#251), Step 5 Preview: 40.0 (#57)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| CritPt | — | 20.9% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1465 |
Math Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 46.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | — | 42% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1470 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 41.2 (#112)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1470 |
Multimodal Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 41.0 (#41)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1267 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 53.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1432 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1519 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1436 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1439 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 76.0 (#50)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1444 |
Long Context Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 44.5 (#64)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1455 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Codestral: —, Step 5 Preview: 62.8 (#71)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1442 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1410 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1447 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Codestral better than Step 5 Preview?
Step 5 Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.9 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Step 5 Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Codestral or Step 5 Preview?
Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Step 5 Preview lists at $1 and $2.70.
Is Codestral or Step 5 Preview better for coding?
Step 5 Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 51.8 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Step 5 Preview does, with 1.02M tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks do Codestral and Step 5 Preview share?
0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Step 5 Preview has 18.