# GPT-3.5-turbo vs Step 3

> Step 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.9 to 23.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-3-5-turbo-vs-step-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-3.5-turbo scores higher in 0 categories and Step 3 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Step 3 leads 54.5 to 25.4.
- Step 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 23.1 | 39.9 |
| Rank | 345 | 145 |
| Context | 16K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | — |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 23.5 (#326)
- Step 3: 39.5 (#144)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1137 | 1367 |
| WeirdML | 3.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 39.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.6% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 70.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.7% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-3.5-turbo: —
- Step 3: —

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| METR Time Horizons | 21.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 13.3 (#328)
- Step 3: 27.6 (#102)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1108 | 1355 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 62.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 3% | — |
| DTBench | 48.5% | — |
| LMCA | 9.7% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 58.1% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 61.6% | — |
| CommonsenseQA 2.0 | 57% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.48 | — |
| ForecastBench | 50.4 | — |
| WinoGrande | 81.6% | — |

## Math

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 6.0 (#321)
- Step 3: 34.9 (#148)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1142 | 1366 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 0% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.2% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 15.9% | — |
| GSM8K | 57.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 10.0 (#298)
- Step 3: 36.2 (#161)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1070 | 1333 |
| GPQA Diamond | 28% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 87.4% | — |
| BoolQ | 87% | — |
| MMLU | 71.4% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 86% | — |
| TriviaQA | 85.8% | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-3.5-turbo: —
- Step 3: 34.9 (#81)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1176 |

## Multilingual

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 31.6 (#253)
- Step 3: 46.5 (#154)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1108 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1075 | 1396 |
| LMArena German | 1090 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1019 | 1271 |
| LMArena Russian | 1123 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1120 | 1372 |
| LMArena French | 1117 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1043 | — |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 58.1 (#257)
- Step 3: 70.6 (#159)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1119 | 1332 |

## Long Context

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 34.0 (#249)
- Step 3: 40.3 (#152)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1121 | 1326 |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-3.5-turbo: 25.4 (#300)
- Step 3: 54.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | GPT-3.5-turbo | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1125 | 1351 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1092 | 1322 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1117 | 1340 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 451 | — |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-3.5-turbo better than Step 3?

Step 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.9 to 23.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Is GPT-3.5-turbo or Step 3 better for coding?

Step 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.5 versus 23.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-3.5-turbo and Step 3 share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-3.5-turbo has 44 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.