Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Mistral Large 4 vs Step 5 Preview

Mistral Large 4
Mistral · Balanced · Open weights
$1.10/1M · 1.0M 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
Mistral Large 4
Step 5
Maker
Mistral
StepFun
Blended price / 1M
$1.10
$1.51
Input / output
$0.68 in · $2.09 out / 1M tokens
$1.00 in · $2.70 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
1M
Open weights
Yes
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
7.6
8.2
Agentic Ability
7.1
7.6
Speed
7.0
7.5
Value for money
5.9
7.1
Reliability
8.8
8.6

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

Verdict: Mistral Large 4 or Step 5?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Mistral Large 4 if you want open-weight, EU-provenance agent work that needs long context and image input. 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 4 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed and value for money), while Mistral Large 4 leads in 1. On price, Mistral Large 4 runs about $1.10 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Step 5 Preview is about $1.51 and proprietary.

Where Mistral Large 4 falls short
  • Still a public preview, so behavior and price can change
  • 26.8% in Artificial Analysis's Terminal-Bench 4.0 run, well below the frontier models
Full Mistral Large 4 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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