MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-23.
| MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash | StepFun: Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | minimax | stepfun |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 71.3 | 73.3 |
| Input Price | $0.15/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $0.60/M | $2.70/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 524,288 | 64,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 70.5 | 72.2 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs $0.30 and Step 5 Preview costs $1.68, so MiniMax M3.1 Flash is about 5.6 times cheaper for the same work.
Both read up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text.
On our blended benchmark score Step 5 Preview leads 73.3 to 71.3.
Across the 19 tasks where they differ, MiniMax M3.1 Flash scores higher on 9 (SQL Generation, Code Completion, Code Documentation and others), Step 5 Preview on 10 (Code Review, Code Refactoring, Bug Fixing and others).
Pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash if you need lower cost; pick Step 5 Preview if you need benchmark performance.
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 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash | StepFun: Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 142 | 142 |
| Code Review | 145 | 145 |
| Code Completion | 133 | 120 |
| Code Refactoring | 147 | 147 |
| Bug Fixing | 149 | 149 |
| Unit Test Generation | 132 | 132 |
| Code Documentation | 138 | 137 |
| Regex Writing | 126 | 126 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 128 | 128 |
| Frontend Component Design | 130 | 130 |
| Data Analysis | 134 | 134 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 137 | 138 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 123 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 129 | 120 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 134 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 134 | 134 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 127 | 118 |
| Blog Post Writing | 130 | 130 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →