Model comparison
DeepSeek-V3 vs Step 3
DeepSeek-V3 and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
DeepSeek
StepFunSummary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3 scores higher in 5 categories and Step 3 in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Step 3 leads 28.4 to 20.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 52.3% for DeepSeek-V3 and 62.3% for Step 3.
Side by side
| DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 39.5 | 40.5 |
| Released | 2024-12-26 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 164K | — |
| Max output | 164K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.24 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | — |
| Results tracked | 60 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 42.3 (#106), Step 3: 40.1 (#147)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1368 | 1367 |
| Aider Polyglot | 55.1% | — |
| SciCode | 35.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 36.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 50% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 70.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 62.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 86.6% | — |
| MBPP+ | 73% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3: —, Step 3: —
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| METR Time Horizons | 49.6% | — |
Reasoning Step 3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 20.5 (#236), Step 3: 28.4 (#105)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 52.3% | 62.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1365 | 1355 |
| SimpleBench | 27.2% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 65.8% | — |
| DTBench | 64.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 60.9% | — |
| LMCA | 15.5% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 87.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.94 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.1 | — |
| HellaSwag | 88.9% | — |
| LiveBench | 66.9% | — |
| PIQA | 84.7% | — |
| WinoGrande | 85.2% | — |
Math Step 3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 32.1 (#219), Step 3: 37.6 (#148)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1373 | 1366 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 37.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 40.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 73.5% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 75.5% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 1.7% | — |
Knowledge Too close to call
DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#155), Step 3: 36.8 (#164)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1351 | 1333 |
| GPQA Diamond | 67.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 72.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 26.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 53.8% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 95.3% | — |
| MMLU | 87.2% | — |
| TriviaQA | 82.9% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
DeepSeek-V3: —, Step 3: 35.5 (#86)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1177 |
Multilingual DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 48.5 (#143), Step 3: 46.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1358 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1391 | 1397 |
| LMArena German | 1374 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1319 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1358 | 1371 |
| LMArena French | 1385 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1333 | — |
Instruction Following DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 72.8 (#130), Step 3: 70.4 (#164)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1345 | 1332 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 81.5% | — |
| IFEval | 83.2% | — |
Long Context Step 3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#253), Step 3: 40.3 (#157)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1352 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 50% | — |
Writing & Preference DeepSeek-V3 leads
DeepSeek-V3: 57.4 (#130), Step 3: 54.3 (#151)
| Benchmark | DeepSeek-V3 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1375 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1364 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1389 | 1341 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1472 | — |
| WildBench | 83% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 49.1% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is DeepSeek-V3 better than Step 3?
DeepSeek-V3 and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (39.5 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is DeepSeek-V3 or Step 3 better for coding?
DeepSeek-V3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.3 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3 and Step 3 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3 has 60 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.