Model comparison
Grok 3 vs Step 5 Preview
Step 5 Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.9 to 39.9 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
StepFunSummary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 3 scores higher in 1 category and Step 5 Preview in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Step 5 Preview leads 40.0 to 13.7.
Side by side
| Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 39.9 | 47.9 |
| Released | 2025-04-09 | 2026-09-16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | 1.02M |
| Max output | — | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $1 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $2.70 |
| Results tracked | 40 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Step 5 Preview leads
Grok 3: 41.9 (#115), Step 5 Preview: 51.8 (#36)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1432 | 1480 |
| Aider Polyglot | 53.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1564 |
| SciCode | — | 58.9% |
| WeirdML | 37.2% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Grok 3: 30.5 (#76), Step 5 Preview: —
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | 29.5% | — |
Reasoning Step 5 Preview leads
Grok 3: 13.7 (#333), Step 5 Preview: 40.0 (#57)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1434 | 1465 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 36.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5.5% | — |
| CritPt | — | 20.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 138.33 | — |
Math Step 5 Preview leads
Grok 3: 38.0 (#145), Step 5 Preview: 46.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1391 | 1470 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 55.6% | — |
| ProofBench | — | 42% |
| Omni-MATH | 46.4% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 88.7% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 3.8% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |
Knowledge Grok 3 leads
Grok 3: 46.2 (#82), Step 5 Preview: 41.2 (#112)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1421 | 1470 |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.8% | — |
| Confabulations | 14.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.8% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Grok 3: —, Step 5 Preview: 41.0 (#41)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1267 |
Multilingual Step 5 Preview leads
Grok 3: 52.3 (#87), Step 5 Preview: 53.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1410 | 1432 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1448 | 1519 |
| LMArena Russian | 1416 | 1436 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1417 | 1439 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | — |
| LMArena German | 1431 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1387 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1373 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Grok 3: 75.0 (#73), Step 5 Preview: 76.0 (#50)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1409 | 1444 |
| IFEval | 88.4% | — |
Long Context Step 5 Preview leads
Grok 3: 38.7 (#192), Step 5 Preview: 44.5 (#64)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1439 | 1455 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 58.3% | — |
Writing & Preference Step 5 Preview leads
Grok 3: 55.8 (#141), Step 5 Preview: 62.8 (#71)
| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Step 5 Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1426 | 1442 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1414 | 1410 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1425 | 1447 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 76.4% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1186 | — |
| WildBench | 84.9% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok 3 better than Step 5 Preview?
Step 5 Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.9 to 39.9 on the Noometry Index.
Is Grok 3 or Step 5 Preview better for coding?
Step 5 Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 51.8 versus 41.9 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Grok 3 and Step 5 Preview share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 3 has 40 scored results on Noometry and Step 5 Preview has 18.