Thinking Machines: Inkling vs StepFun: Step 3.7 Flash
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-07.
| Thinking Machines: Inkling | StepFun: Step 3.7 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | thinkingmachines | stepfun |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | - | 50.8 |
| Input Price | $1.00/M | $0.20/M |
| Output Price | $4.05/M | $1.15/M |
| Context Window | 524,288 | 262,144 |
| Max Output | 471,859 | 230,400 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | - | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | - | 49.9 |
| ai_index_agentic | - | 35.5 |
| ai_index_coding | - | 65.3 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Step 3.7 Flash costs $0.49 and Inkling costs $2.01, so Step 3.7 Flash is about 4.1 times cheaper for the same work.
Inkling reads up to 524,288 tokens at once, roughly 786 pages of text, against about 393 pages for Step 3.7 Flash.
Only Inkling offers audio input; only Step 3.7 Flash offers structured output and video input.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Step 3.7 Flash on 20 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Completion and others).
Inkling was released in July 2026 and Step 3.7 Flash in May 2026.
Pick Inkling if you need long documents or audio input; pick Step 3.7 Flash if you need lower cost, structured output, video input or the stronger all-round task scores.
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 | Thinking Machines: Inkling | StepFun: Step 3.7 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 125 | 153 |
| Code Review | 128 | 146 |
| Code Completion | 119 | 130 |
| Code Refactoring | 132 | 144 |
| Bug Fixing | 136 | 155 |
| Unit Test Generation | 116 | 139 |
| Code Documentation | 131 | 133 |
| Regex Writing | 119 | 129 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 116 | 131 |
| Frontend Component Design | 118 | 136 |
| Data Analysis | 120 | 150 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 121 | 141 |
| ETL Scripting | 124 | 137 |
| JSON Extraction | 111 | 142 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 116 | 133 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 123 | 138 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 123 | 138 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 137 | 142 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 115 | 128 |
| Blog Post Writing | 121 | 129 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →