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Model comparison
StepFun's Step 5 Preview against xAI's Grok 4.6: vendor list prices, limits, abilities and the Artificial Analysis indexes side by side - and what OpenSmartRoute does when both are available.
Step 5 Preview lists at $1.43 per million tokens blended against $3.00 for Grok 4.6 - 2.1x less.
Intelligence index 44 against 44: within a point of each other.
Step 5 Preview reads 1.0M tokens at once, Grok 4.6 500k.
only Step 5 Preview offers open weights.
Step 5 Preview was released about 2 months later.
Vendor list prices per million tokens and published limits; indexes are Artificial Analysis composites (0-100).
| Specification | Step 5 Preview | Grok 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M tokens | $1.00 | $2.00 |
| Output price / 1M tokens | $2.70 | $6.00 |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | $1.43 | $3.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.10 | $0.50 |
| Context window | 1.0M | 500K |
| Max output | 64K | 450K |
| Input | text, image, video | text, image, file |
| Output | text | text |
| Tool calls | ||
| Structured output | ||
| Reasoning | ||
| Open weights | ||
| Intelligence index | 44 | 44 |
| Coding index | - | 77 |
| Agentic index | - | 53 |
| Released | Oct 8, 2026 | Aug 12, 2026 |
| Available on this deployment |
List price times tokens for three typical workloads; your mix of input and output decides which model's pricing suits you.
| Workload | Step 5 Preview | Grok 4.6 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support chat20M tokens in, 5M out a month - a help desk answering a few thousand conversations. | $33.50 | $70.00 | $36.50 less on Step 5 Preview |
| Document summaries100M in, 5M out - long inputs, short answers. | $114 | $230 | $117 less on Step 5 Preview |
| Coding assistant60M in, 20M out - a team's editor assistant, output-heavy. | $114 | $240 | $126 less on Step 5 Preview |
The two measure the same on the intelligence index, so the router treats them as peers and lets price, observed latency and your outcomes decide: Step 5 Preview wins on cost, and a few bad outcomes on either move the next requests to the other.
# targets.yaml - both models as routing targets (metadata.model links each to the catalogue entry)
targets:
- { id: step-5-preview, kind: llm, metadata: { model: stepfun/step-5-preview } }
- { id: grok-4.6, kind: llm, metadata: { model: x-ai/grok-4.6 } }
# rules.yaml - the cheaper model by default, the stronger one when the request is hard
rules:
- name: simple-requests-stay-cheap
when: { max_complexity: 0.45 }
prefer: [step-5-preview]
weight: 0.8
- name: hard-requests-escalate
when: { min_complexity: 0.45 }
prefer: [grok-4.6]
weight: 0.8Every StepFun and xAI model, with prices, is on the vendor pages; the rankings show what the router actually picks.