Model comparison
Grok-3 mini vs Step 3
Grok-3 mini and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
StepFunSummary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 6 categories and Step 3 in 2 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Step 3 leads 28.4 to 13.6.
- Step 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Grok-3 mini | Step 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 40.5 |
| Released | 2025-04-09 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 35 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Grok-3 mini: 40.8 (#131), Step 3: 40.1 (#147)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1379 | 1367 |
| Aider Polyglot | 49.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 42.6% | — |
Reasoning Step 3 leads
Grok-3 mini: 13.6 (#334), Step 3: 28.4 (#105)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | 62.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1375 | 1355 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 16.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 140.35 | — |
Math Grok-3 mini leads
Grok-3 mini: 42.1 (#85), Step 3: 37.6 (#148)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1386 | 1366 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 31.8% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 90.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 5.9% | — |
Knowledge Grok-3 mini leads
Grok-3 mini: 46.4 (#81), Step 3: 36.8 (#164)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1395 | 1333 |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 10.8% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 67.5% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Grok-3 mini: —, Step 3: 35.5 (#86)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1177 |
Multilingual Grok-3 mini leads
Grok-3 mini: 48.1 (#145), Step 3: 46.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1352 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1387 | 1397 |
| LMArena German | 1349 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1335 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1353 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1381 | 1371 |
| LMArena French | 1357 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1342 | — |
Instruction Following Grok-3 mini leads
Grok-3 mini: 78.5 (#9), Step 3: 70.4 (#164)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1357 | 1332 |
| IFEval | 95.1% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#147), Step 3: 40.3 (#157)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1372 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |
Writing & Preference Step 3 leads
Grok-3 mini: 52.5 (#169), Step 3: 54.3 (#151)
| Benchmark | Grok-3 mini | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1370 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1342 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1355 | 1341 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 73.5% | — |
| WildBench | 65.1% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok-3 mini better than Step 3?
Grok-3 mini and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Grok-3 mini or Step 3 better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (40.8 vs 40.1); test both on your own repository before choosing.
How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and Step 3 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.