Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview
Full profiles: Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic) and Step 5 Preview (StepFun): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 10 sources
As of 14 Nov 2026, Claude Opus 4.6 is ahead of Step 5 Preview on quality (62.6 vs 54.3 on the BenchLeader Index), but Step 5 Preview is 7.0× cheaper at $1.43 vs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended. Claude Opus 4.6 leads in every category we measure both in. Step 5 Preview streams 3×+ faster.
Key facts (as of 14 Nov 2026)
- Claude Opus 4.6 scores 62.6 on the BenchLeader Index and Step 5 Preview scores 54.3 (BenchLeader, 14 Nov 2026).
- Claude Opus 4.6 costs $10.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 14 Nov 2026).
- Step 5 Preview costs $1.43 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 14 Nov 2026).
- Step 5 Preview streams 3×+ faster than Claude Opus 4.6 (Artificial Analysis, 7-day median, 14 Nov 2026).
- Of the 1 benchmarks both models have, Step 5 Preview leads 1 (BenchLeader, 14 Nov 2026).
Claude Opus 4.6 benchmarks 
Step 5 Preview benchmarks Which to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Claude Opus 4.6 | 64 vs 50 category score; Vibe Code Bench v1.1 53.5% vs 70.4% | High |
| Maths | Claude Opus 4.6 | 65 vs 60 category score | Medium |
| Reasoning | Claude Opus 4.6 | 76 vs 52 category score | High |
| Knowledge | Claude Opus 4.6 | 62 vs 54 category score | High |
| Chat quality (human preference) | – | Only Step 5 Preview has an Arena rating (63 category score) | Not comparable |
| Lowest cost | Step 5 Preview | $1.43 vs $10.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.071 vs $0.400 | – |
| Fastest first answer | Claude Opus 4.6 | 1.1 s (Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking)) vs 24.3 s (Step 5 Preview) to the first answer token | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) leads on quality: 62.6 vs 54.3.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) is stronger in coding, knowledge, maths, reasoning.
- Step 5 Preview is 7.0× cheaper ($1.43 vs $10.00 per 1M blended).
- Step 5 Preview streams 3.7× faster (133 vs 36 tokens per second).
At a glance
| Spec | Claude Opus 4.6 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Anthropic | StepFun |
| Released | 5 Feb 2026 | 18 Sep 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Compared at | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Step 5 Preview |
| Open weights | No | Yes |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 / $0.500 | $1.00 / $2.70 / $0.105 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Step 5 Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 75.6 | 51.7 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Coding | 63.9 | 49.9 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Agents & tools | – | 49.7 | not comparable |
| Maths | 65.3 | 60.1 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Knowledge | 62.3 | 53.7 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Human preference | – | 63.1 | not comparable |
| Multimodal | – | 59.3 | not comparable |
| Long context | – | 69.0 | not comparable |
| Composite | – | 38.3 | not comparable |
On one chart
Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Agents & tools, Instruction following, Long context, Multimodal, Human preference.
Model, click to add or removeIndex
Where sources disagree
Across the 1 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 0, Step 5 Preview leads 1. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 4.6 ahead.
| Overall index | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Step 5 Preview | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 62.6 | 54.3 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
| Arena Text | 1503† | 1449 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.
| Measure | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $10.00 | $1.43 |
| Input / output per 1M | $5.00 / $25.00 | $1.00 / $2.70 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.500 | $0.105 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0095 | $0.0012 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.075 | $0.014 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.068 | $0.010 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.400 | $0.071 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.015 | $0.0025 |
| Agentic coding session, input mostly cached | $0.198 | $0.030 |
| Cost per benchmark task (AA Index) | – | $2.35 |
| Output tokens per task (AA Index) | – | 113k |
| Of which reasoning | – | 80k |
| Time per task (AA Index) | – | 14 min |
| Output speed | 36 tok/s | 133 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 1.1 s | 24.3 s |
| Time to a complete answer | – | 57.4 s |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) scores 62.6 and takes 1 s to its first answer token; Claude Opus 4.6 (high) scores 62.5 in 1 s, Claude Opus 4.6 scores 62.1 in 1 s. Step 5 Preview scores 54.3 and takes 24 s to its first answer token. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
168 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 62.6 | 54.3 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 63.9 | 49.9 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 62.3 | 53.7 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 65.3 | 60.1 |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 75.6 | 51.7 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | – | 49.7 |
| Composite score | BenchLeader | – | 38.3 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | – | 63.1 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | – | 69.0 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | – | 59.3 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $10.00 | $1.43 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 36 tok/s | 133 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 1.1 s | 24.3 s |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 90.5%† | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam | Scale AI / CAIS | 19.0%† | – |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 67.6%† | – |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1526† | 1477 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | – | 83.8% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 88.7%† | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 84.0%† | – |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 19.1%† | 46.5% |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 24.3% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 89.7% | – |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.6% | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 94.0%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 69.2%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-3 | ARC Prize | 0.5%† | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 2.8%† | 20.9% |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 32.5% |
| MysteryMechanism | Vals AI | – | 18.5% |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 21.0%† | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 15.0%† | – |
| CL-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 20.7%† | – |
| CL-bench Life | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 13.6%† | – |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 55.8%† | – |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 91.2%† | – |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 63.1%† | – |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 78.7%† | – |
Show all 168 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| SciCode | SciCode | – | 58.9% |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 77.9%† | – |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 26.6%† | – |
| GSO-Bench | GSO-Bench | 33.3%† | – |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1547† | 1505 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1537† | 1573† |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | – | 67.6% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 78.2%† | – |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 84.7% | – |
| IOI | Vals AI | – | 38.1% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 78.2% | – |
| SWE-Bench Pro | Scale AI SEAL | 51.9% | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | SWE-bench | 75.6%† | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | SWE-bench | 75.6%† | – |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | – | 39.0% |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 47.0% |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | – | 40.8% |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 53.5% | 70.4% |
| SWE-Bench Pro (private) | Scale AI SEAL | 51.9% | – |
| SWE Atlas: Codebase QnA | Scale AI SEAL | 33.3%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Refactoring | Scale AI SEAL | 35.6%† | – |
| SWE Atlas: Test Writing | Scale AI SEAL | 36.7%† | – |
| MirrorCode | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 33.3%† | – |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 996.5† | – |
| AlgoTune | AlgoTune | 1.5† | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 33.3% |
| Design Arena Website | Design Arena | 1278 | – |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 38.4% |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 12.0% |
| Agents & tools | |||
| Terminal-Bench | Terminal-Bench | 79.8%† | – |
| Cybench | Cybench | 93.0%† | – |
| Remote Labor Index | Scale AI / CAIS | 4.2%† | – |
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 46.3%† | – |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | – | -3.7 |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | – | 19.4% |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | – | 24.8% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 49.0%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | 48.5%† | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 84.8%† | – |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 76.8%† | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 38.3%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 27.3%† | – |
| GDPval-AA v2.1, normalised score | Artificial Analysis | – | 54.3% |
| GDPval-AA v2.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 1591 |
| ITBench SRE (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 55.6% |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 35.0% |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 33.0%† | 38.0% |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | – | 50.7% |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | – | 58.9% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 12.9% |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | – | 9.2% |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | – | 40.4% |
| SREBench | Vals AI | – | 0.4% |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | – | 27.3% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 58.4% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 31.8% |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | – | 2.9% |
| Arena Search | Arena (LMArena) | 1222† | – |
| DeepResearch Bench | DeepResearch Bench | 55.3%† | – |
| METR Time Horizons | METR | 78.9%† | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 44.1%† | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 8017.6† | – |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | – | 51.0% |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 14.8% |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | – | 47.2% |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 1424 |
| Design Arena Agentic | Design Arena | 1191† | – |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 2.4% |
| CWE-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 52.5% |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 15.8% |
| CyberGym end-to-end (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 74.8% |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 66.0%† | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 26.8%† | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 94.4%† | – |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 50.0%† | 42.0% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 89.3%† | – |
| AIME (Vals) | Vals AI | 95.6% | – |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 96.7%† | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 96.2%† | – |
| USAMO 2026 | MathArena | 47.0%† | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 34.5%† | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1503† | 1470 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 47.0%† | – |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | – | 63.5% |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | – | 75.5% |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 69.9%† | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | – | 16.4 |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 89.1% | – |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 85.3% | – |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 67.0% | – |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 76.0% | – |
| MedQA | Vals AI | 95.4% | – |
| PRBench Finance | Scale AI SEAL | 53.3%† | – |
| PRBench Legal | Scale AI SEAL | 52.3%† | – |
| MultiNRC | Scale AI SEAL | 48.3%† | – |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | – | 67.4% |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | 62.1% | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | – | 57.1% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 69.5% |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 49.1% | – |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 86.1% | – |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | – | 58.1% |
| DrugDiscoveryBench | Scale AI SEAL | 27.7%† | – |
| EBR-bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 12.7%† | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | – | 36.4% |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | – | 68.7% |
| Global-MMLU-Lite (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 92.2%† | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 83.3%† | – |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 63.3%† | – |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | 44.6%† | – |
| MultiChallenge | Scale AI SEAL | 56.0%† | – |
| TutorBench | Scale AI SEAL | 53.5%† | – |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1499† | 1450 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1496† | 1449 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1210† | – |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1478† | 1413 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1509† | 1445 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1517† | 1461 |
| Multimodal | |||
| Arena Vision | Arena (LMArena) | 1312† | 1263 |
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | – | 70.8% |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 72.5%† | 76.4% |
| VISTA | Scale AI SEAL | 45.5%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 83.9% | – |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 68.5% | – |
| VTB | Scale AI SEAL | 27.5% | – |
| Code2Video-AA | Artificial Analysis | – | 821 |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | – | 859 |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 67.0%† | 88.3% |
| Arena Document | Arena (LMArena) | 1496† | – |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | – | 18.3% |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 156.3† | – |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | – | 54.9% |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 74.5%† | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | – | 28.5 |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 26.4† | 43.7 |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 274.5† | 318.2 |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | – | 54.8 |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | – | 55.4% |
| Vals Science Index | Vals AI | – | 29.6% |
| AA Cyber Index | Artificial Analysis | – | 47.7 |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 20.5%† | – |
| MASK | Scale AI SEAL | 96.3%† | – |
| Metadata | |||
| AA Openness Index | Artificial Analysis | – | 33.3 |
Data as of 2026-11-14. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
What changed
- Step 5 Preview: 1 score revision.
- Step 5 Preview: 7 score revisions.
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking): BenchLeader Index 62.1 → 62.6.
- Step 5 Preview: 2 new results (Vals Index, Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1).
- Step 5 Preview: 1 score revision.
- Step 5 Preview: BenchLeader Index 58.0 → 54.7.
- Step 5 Preview: 5 new results (AA Intelligence Index v5.0, AA Progress Index v1, HLE-Diamond (AA)…); 2 score revisions; Step 5 Preview cost per task moved from $1.03/M to $2.35/M (128% up).
- Step 5 Preview: 3 score revisions.
- Step 5 Preview: 1 score revision.
- Step 5 Preview: 7 new results (Code Migration v1.1, Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1, Finance Agent v2.1…).
Related comparisons
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.2
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Step 5 Preview vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Step 5 Preview vs GPT-6 Astra
- Step 5 Preview vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Step 5 Preview vs Gemini 4 Argon
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview: questions
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 better than Step 5 Preview?
- Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) leads on quality: 62.6 vs 54.3. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) is ahead overall as of 14 Nov 2026, but check the category scores for your use.
- Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Step 5 Preview is cheaper today: $1.43 against $10.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Claude Opus 4.6 or Step 5 Preview better for coding?
- Claude Opus 4.6 scores higher in coding (64 vs 50 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is faster, Claude Opus 4.6 or Step 5 Preview?
- Step 5 Preview streams 3×+ faster (133 vs 36 output tokens per second, Artificial Analysis 7-day median).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Both accept 1,000,000 tokens of context.
More questions (3)
- Which has lower latency?
- Claude Opus 4.6 answers first: 1.1 s against 24.3 s to the first answer token, as Artificial Analysis measures it. Reasoning effort drives most of this: a higher setting thinks longer before it answers.
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview?
- Across the 1 benchmarks both have, Claude Opus 4.6 leads 0, Step 5 Preview leads 1. Every overall index that rates both puts Claude Opus 4.6 ahead.
- When was Step 5 Preview released?
- Step 5 Preview was released on 18 Sep 2026.