Google: Gemini 4 Argon vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-19.
| Google: Gemini 4 Argon | StepFun: Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | stepfun | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 90.2 | 73.3 |
| Input Price | $2.00/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $10.00/M | $2.70/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 943,718 | 64,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 86.7 | 72.2 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Step 5 Preview costs $1.68 and Gemini 4 Argon costs $4.50, so Step 5 Preview is about 2.7 times cheaper for the same work.
Both read up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text.
Only Gemini 4 Argon offers audio input.
On our blended benchmark score Gemini 4 Argon leads 90.2 to 73.3.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemini 4 Argon scores higher on 13 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others), Step 5 Preview on 7 (Code Completion, Code Documentation, Regex Writing and others).
Pick Gemini 4 Argon if you need audio input or benchmark performance; pick Step 5 Preview if you need lower cost.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Google: Gemini 4 Argon | StepFun: Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 143 | 142 |
| Code Review | 148 | 145 |
| Code Completion | 119 | 120 |
| Code Refactoring | 149 | 147 |
| Bug Fixing | 152 | 149 |
| Unit Test Generation | 134 | 132 |
| Code Documentation | 137 | 137 |
| Regex Writing | 126 | 126 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 130 | 128 |
| Frontend Component Design | 132 | 130 |
| Data Analysis | 137 | 134 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 140 | 138 |
| JSON Extraction | 121 | 123 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 118 | 120 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 135 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 135 | 134 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 150 | 149 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 117 | 118 |
| Blog Post Writing | 131 | 130 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →