Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview

Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic · Balanced · Proprietary
$6.60/1M · 1M ctx
Step 5 Preview
StepFun · Balanced · Proprietary
$1.51/1M · 1M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Sonnet 4.6
Step 5
Maker
Anthropic
StepFun
Blended price / 1M
$6.60
$1.51
Input / output
$3.00 in · $15 out / 1M tokens
$1.00 in · $2.70 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
1M
Open weights
No
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
6.4
8.2
Agentic Ability
5.1
7.6
Speed
6.5
7.5
Value for money
4.3
7.1
Reliability
8.4
8.6

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Sonnet 4.6 or Step 5?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want existing Sonnet 4.6 setups until they move to Sonnet 5.5. Choose Step 5 Preview if you want mid-priced agent loops that want more capability than a Flash-class model.

In our editorial scoring, Step 5 Preview leads in 5 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed, value for money and reliability), while Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads in 0. On price, Claude Sonnet 4.6 runs about $6.60 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; Step 5 Preview is about $1.51 and proprietary.

Where Sonnet 4.6 falls short
  • Superseded by Claude Sonnet 5.5, which costs less ($2/$10 vs $3/$15) and scores far higher
  • About 57 output tokens/s at max effort, per Artificial Analysis
Full Sonnet 4.6 breakdown →
Where Step 5 falls short
  • Still a preview, so behavior and price can change
  • Only StepFun serves it on OpenRouter, so there is no provider fallback
Full Step 5 breakdown →

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