Google: Gemini 4 Carbon vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-12.
| Google: Gemini 4 Carbon | StepFun: Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | stepfun | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 98.9 | 43.5 |
| Input Price | $2.00/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $10.00/M | $2.70/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,000,000 |
| Max Output | 943,718 | 64,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 99.0 | 47.1 |
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 Carbon costs $4.50, so Step 5 Preview is about 2.7 times cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,048,576 and 1,000,000 tokens, about 1,573 and 1,500 pages.
Only Gemini 4 Carbon offers audio input.
On our blended benchmark score Gemini 4 Carbon leads 98.9 to 43.5.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemini 4 Carbon scores higher on 17 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others), Step 5 Preview on 3 (Code Completion, JSON Extraction, Bulk Data Labeling).
Gemini 4 Carbon was released in November 2026 and Step 5 Preview in October 2026.
Pick Gemini 4 Carbon if you need audio input, benchmark performance or the stronger all-round task scores; 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 Carbon | StepFun: Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 144 | 139 |
| Code Review | 150 | 140 |
| Code Completion | 119 | 120 |
| Code Refactoring | 151 | 143 |
| Bug Fixing | 154 | 144 |
| Unit Test Generation | 135 | 129 |
| Code Documentation | 138 | 135 |
| Regex Writing | 127 | 124 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 131 | 125 |
| Frontend Component Design | 133 | 127 |
| Data Analysis | 138 | 131 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 135 |
| ETL Scripting | 141 | 134 |
| JSON Extraction | 121 | 123 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 118 | 120 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 135 | 133 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 135 | 133 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 152 | 145 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 118 | 117 |
| Blog Post Writing | 132 | 127 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →