StepFun: Step 5 Preview vs Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-09.
| StepFun: Step 5 Preview | Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | stepfun | qwen |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 74.2 | 77.3 |
| Input Price | $1.00/M | $2.00/M |
| Output Price | $2.70/M | $6.00/M |
| Context Window | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Max Output | 64,000 | 131,072 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 72.2 | 74.9 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Step 5 Preview costs $1.68 and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) costs $3.50, so Step 5 Preview is about 2.1 times cheaper for the same work.
Both read up to 1,000,000 tokens at once, roughly 1,500 pages of text.
On our blended benchmark score Qwen3.8 Max (0902) leads 77.3 to 74.2.
Across the 19 tasks where they differ, Step 5 Preview scores higher on 9 (SQL Generation, Code Completion, Code Documentation and others), Qwen3.8 Max (0902) on 10 (Code Review, Code Refactoring, Bug Fixing and others).
Step 5 Preview was released in October 2026 and Qwen3.8 Max (0902) in September 2026.
Pick Step 5 Preview if you need lower cost; pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) 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 | StepFun: Step 5 Preview | Qwen: Qwen3.8 Max (0902) |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 142 | 142 |
| Code Review | 145 | 146 |
| Code Completion | 120 | 119 |
| Code Refactoring | 147 | 148 |
| Bug Fixing | 149 | 150 |
| Unit Test Generation | 132 | 133 |
| Code Documentation | 137 | 137 |
| Regex Writing | 126 | 125 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 128 | 129 |
| Frontend Component Design | 130 | 131 |
| Data Analysis | 134 | 135 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 138 | 138 |
| JSON Extraction | 123 | 122 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 120 | 119 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 134 | 134 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 134 | 134 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 118 | 118 |
| Blog Post Writing | 130 | 130 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →