Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

DeepSeek R1 (0528) vs Step 5 Preview

DeepSeek R1 (0528)
DeepSeek · Balanced · Open weights
$0.99/1M · 164K 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
DeepSeek R1
Step 5
Maker
DeepSeek
StepFun
Blended price / 1M
$0.99
$1.51
Input / output
$0.50 in · $2.15 out / 1M tokens
$1.00 in · $2.70 out / 1M tokens
Context window
164K
1M
Open weights
Yes
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
4.0
8.2
Agentic Ability
4.4
7.6
Speed
5.1
7.5
Value for money
4.7
7.1
Reliability
8.4
8.6

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

Verdict: DeepSeek R1 or Step 5?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose DeepSeek R1 (0528) if you want research and comparisons that need the original R1 reasoning model. 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 DeepSeek R1 (0528) leads in 0. On price, DeepSeek R1 (0528) runs about $0.99 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Step 5 Preview is about $1.51 and proprietary.

Where DeepSeek R1 falls short
  • Slow (about 28 output tokens/s, per Artificial Analysis)
  • 164K context, smaller than 27.9% of the coding-agent requests we measured
Full DeepSeek R1 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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