Step 5 Preview Open vs 
Mistral Large 4 Open
Step 5 Preview vs Mistral Large 4 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
$2.7 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
$4.18 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
Step 5 Preview vs Mistral Large 4 specs
| Spec | Step 5 Preview | Mistral Large 4 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maker | Stepfun | Mistral AI | – |
| Type | Open-weight | Open-weight | – |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens | = Tie |
| Input price | $1/M · free self-host | $1.36/M · free self-host | |
| Output price | $2.7/M · free self-host | $4.18/M · free self-host | |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes | = Tie |
| License | Open weights | Apache 2.0 | – |
Price gap & when to choose each
Step 5 Preview is ~1.5× cheaper than Mistral Large 4 on output tokens ($2.7 vs $4.18 per M tokens).
- You want to self-host or run on your cloud
- You prioritize data privacy & control
- You want the lowest operating costs
- You are building open or reproducible AI
- You want to self-host or run on your cloud
- You prioritize data privacy & control
- You are building open or reproducible AI
Feature comparison
| Capability | Step 5 Preview | Mistral Large 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs fully offline | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✓ |
Benchmarks: Step 5 Preview vs Mistral Large 4
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
How Step 5 Preview and Mistral Large 4 score
| Criterion | Step 5 Preview | Mistral Large 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 4.5 | 4.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Openness | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Self-hosting | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Multimodality | 5.0 | 5.0 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
What each model is
Step 5 Preview Open
Step 5 Preview is StepFun's flagship model for agentic work, built on a sparse Mixture-of-Experts architecture (27B active / 600B total parameters). It performs strongly in software engineering and professional...
Mistral Large 4 Open
Mistral Large 4 is a frontier multimodal (text and image input) model from Mistral AI built for reasoning, coding, and agentic workloads. It offers a 1M-token context window with up...
Other models in these families
These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.
Frequently asked questions
Step 5 Preview vs Mistral Large 4 — which is cheaper?
Step 5 Preview is cheaper on output ($2.7/M vs $4.18/M).
Which has the larger context window?
Step 5 Preview offers the larger context window (1M tokens).
Step 5 Preview vs Mistral Large 4 — which should I pick in 2026?
Choose Step 5 Preview for the lower output price ($2.7/M vs $4.18/M). It also gives you the larger 1M context window.
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