Particle AI: Particle-1 vs StepFun: Step 5 Preview
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-02.
| Particle AI: Particle-1 | StepFun: Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | particle-ai | stepfun |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Input Price | $0.05/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $0.50/M | $2.70/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 131,072 | 64,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Particle-1 costs $0.17 and Step 5 Preview costs $1.68, so Particle-1 is about 9.6 times cheaper for the same work.
Both read up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text.
Only Step 5 Preview offers video input.
Across the 10 tasks where they differ, Particle-1 scores higher on 10 (SQL Generation, Code Completion, Code Documentation and others).
Pick Particle-1 if you need lower cost or the stronger all-round task scores; pick Step 5 Preview if you need video input.
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 | Particle AI: Particle-1 | StepFun: Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 133 | 133 |
| Code Completion | 131 | 119 |
| Code Documentation | 131 | 131 |
| Regex Writing | 119 | 119 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 133 | 133 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 123 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 129 | 120 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 137 | 137 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 123 | 115 |
| Blog Post Writing | 121 | 121 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →