Model comparison
Grok 4.1 Fast vs Step 3
Grok 4.1 Fast and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.4 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
StepFunSummary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 4.1 Fast scores higher in 6 categories and Step 3 in 3 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.1 Fast leads 43.4 to 28.4.
- Step 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 41.4 | 40.5 |
| Released | 2025-06-27 | — |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 128K | — |
| Max output | 30K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.20 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.50 | — |
| Results tracked | 32 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Step 3 leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 34.1 (#245), Step 3: 40.1 (#147)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1411 | 1367 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1242 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 394.93 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Grok 4.1 Fast: 36.3 (#39), Step 3: —
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 69.6% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 13.1% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1171 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 1,107 | — |
Reasoning Grok 4.1 Fast leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 43.4 (#49), Step 3: 28.4 (#105)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1407 | 1355 |
| SimpleBench | 56% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 62.3% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 87.4% | — |
| DTBench | 87.7% | — |
| ForecastBench | 61 | — |
Math Step 3 leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 31.9 (#221), Step 3: 37.6 (#148)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1408 | 1366 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 60.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 4% | — |
Knowledge Step 3 leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 33.1 (#207), Step 3: 36.8 (#164)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1399 | 1333 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 17.8% | — |
Multimodal Grok 4.1 Fast leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 37.0 (#76), Step 3: 35.5 (#86)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1201 | 1177 |
Multilingual Grok 4.1 Fast leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 51.0 (#114), Step 3: 46.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1391 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1441 | 1397 |
| LMArena German | 1404 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1361 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1387 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1413 | 1371 |
| LMArena French | 1415 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1349 | — |
Instruction Following Grok 4.1 Fast leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 72.7 (#133), Step 3: 70.4 (#164)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1376 | 1332 |
Long Context Grok 4.1 Fast leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 42.4 (#126), Step 3: 40.3 (#157)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1390 | 1326 |
Writing & Preference Grok 4.1 Fast leads
Grok 4.1 Fast: 57.2 (#131), Step 3: 54.3 (#151)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.1 Fast | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1408 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1394 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1389 | 1341 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1327 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok 4.1 Fast better than Step 3?
Grok 4.1 Fast and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.4 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Grok 4.1 Fast or Step 3 better for coding?
Step 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 34.1 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Grok 4.1 Fast and Step 3 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.1 Fast has 32 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.