Is Step 5 Preview a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats Step 5 Preview on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 143 · Oct 21, 2026
As of Oct 21, 2026, Step 5 Preview is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 50.3 higher and costs 62% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 143 rated, priced standard models are undominated. MiMo-V2.6-Pro: Price under confirmation since Oct 21, 2026.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
MiMo-V2.6-Pro is both better and cheaper than Step 5 Preview: 50.3 points higher on LMArena and 62% less per million tokens, $0.885 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1440.0
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$1.43/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1490.3
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.540/M
Price under confirmation since Oct 21, 2026Step 5 Preview takes text, image, video, returns up to 64,000 tokens from a 1,048,576-token context, and is listed by 5 sellers.
Compared against 143 rated, priced models on this lens: 3 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. Step 5 Preview scores 1440 at $1.43 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1490.3 +50.3 | $0.540/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 21, 2026 | 62% |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1471.0 +31.0 | $0.238/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | 83% |
| MiMo-V2.6-Flash | 1455.2 +15.2 | $0.168/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 21, 2026 | 88% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| GLM 5.3 | 1471.4 | $1.00/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | image, video |
| GLM 5.2 | 1470.0 | $1.12/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | image, video |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1465.1 | $0.544/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 21, 2026 | image, video |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 1462.5 | $0.182/MPrice under confirmation since Oct 12, 2026 | video |
| Kimi K2.6 | 1455.4 | $0.825/M | context, video |
The link keeps the model and mix, using the current catalogue. Monthly spend and switching cost stay in this browser tab and are left out of the link.
Saved decision references
Save the model, workload, catalogue date and capability-preservation rule in this browser. Spend, switching cost and bill contents are not saved. No account or notifications.
Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
Historical decisions cannot be fully replayed from saved references: past prices, scores and capability evidence are not stored.