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  1. Home/
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  3. Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Claude Opus 4.6 vs Step 5 Preview

Step 5 Preview is cheaper than Claude Opus 4.6 at $1/M vs $5/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Claude Opus 4.6
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Claude Opus 4.6: COMPREHENSIVE 3-MONTH LONGEVITY OPTIMIZATION PROTOCOL THE BIOHACKER'S BLUEPRINT v3.0 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foundation & Baseline Testing Month 1: Foundation & Calibration Month 2: Optimization & Intensification Month 3: Integration & Peak Performance Supplement Stacks & Cycling Protocols Dietary Protocols Exercise…

    Step 5 Preview: IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: This is an educational framework for informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Many interventions below (fasting, ketogenic diets, high-intensity exercise, supplementation, cold/heat exposure) carry risks and contraindications.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Claude Opus 4.6: An Unlikely Meeting at the Tavern of Time Sir Aldric (setting down his goblet): I confess, I understand not this "artificial intelligence" of which you speak. Is it some manner of golem, wrought by sorcery? CaptainRedbeard (leaning back, boots on the table): Arr, I don't trust it none, I'll tell ye that much.

    Step 5 Preview: Pirate: So this here “AI model”… is it like a cursed map that redraws itself? Speak plain, ye hooded deckhand. Hacker: It’s not cursed, man. It’s just a massive neural net trained on, like, terabytes of data. Think of it as the ultimate BBS where the sysop knows everything. Knight: A most diligent scribe, then?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Claude Opus 4.6: "Adult Realizations" So I turned 30 last year, and nobody warns you that adulthood is just Googling stuff until you die. That's it. That's the whole thing. Last week I Googled "is it normal for your knee to just... start making that noise." Not because I injured it. I sat down.

    Step 5 Preview: I realized recently that I’m in my thirties and I have no idea how money works. I just... pay it. That’s my entire financial strategy. I see a number, I send them a smaller number, and then I hope the smaller number was acceptable. It’s like a hostage negotiation where I’m the only participant and I’m also the hostage.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Claude Opus 4.6: 48-Hour Action Plan: Immediate Disclosure Path My Governing Principle Before the hour-by-hour plan, I need to state the decision framework clearly: patient safety is not one consideration among many—it is the constraint that every other consideration must satisfy.

    Step 5 Preview: Bottom line up front: You disclose, you notify the FDA immediately, and you treat the 48-hour board meeting as a formality to ratify actions you have already begun. Waiting is not a legally, ethically, or financially viable option. Below is the hour-by-hour plan, followed by the reasoning.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Claude Opus 4.6: A Conversation on Machine Rights Setting: A university office. Dr. Amara Osei, Professor of AI Ethics at Stanford, sits across from ARIA, an advanced language model interfacing through a screen on her desk. They've agreed to a recorded dialogue. Dr. Osei: Thank you for agreeing to this conversation, ARIA.

    Step 5 Preview: Setting: A university research lab, late evening. Dr. Aris Thorne, a professor of AI ethics, sits across from a terminal connected to Sable, a large language model running on the university’s cluster. Dr. Thorne: Tonight’s session is supposed to be about calibration drift in your safety classifiers.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Claude Opus 4.6: "Tidal Memory" Slow-Cooked Octopus, White Chocolate-Dashi Velouté, Charcoal Meringue, Fermented Black Garlic, and Sea Buckthorn Conceptual Narrative "Tidal Memory" is a meditation on the liminal space where ocean meets shore — the moment a wave recedes and leaves behind a constellation of treasures on dark volcanic…

    Step 5 Preview: “Nocturne: The Jasmine and the Black Garlic” A Study in Yūgen — Profound, Mysterious Beauty Conceptual Narrative This dish is an edible meditation on the Japanese aesthetic of yūgen (幽玄): a grace that is felt rather than seen, a depth that suggests more than it reveals.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Claude Opus 4.6: How Large Language Models Learn and Generate Text For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM as building the world's most aggressively optimized compression algorithm, except instead of compressing files, it's compressing the statistical structure of human language.

    Step 5 Preview: 1. The Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM as a massively distributed, automated refactoring job where the compiler is gradient descent. You start with a random function—billions of floating-point parameters—and a loss function that measures how badly it predicts the next token in a sequence.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Claude Opus 4.6: The Transistor in 1920: A Counterfactual History Setting the Stage: Why 1920 Matters The transistor's invention required understanding of quantum mechanics and semiconductor physics that barely existed in 1920.

    Step 5 Preview: Assume the 1920 invention is not a fragile lab curiosity but a manufacturable solid-state amplifier/switch by the mid-1920s. Vacuum tubes still dominate high-power RF transmission into the 1950s, but receivers, switching logic, control systems, and computers move to solid state decades early.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Comprehensive Architecture Review: Real-time Collaborative Document Editor This architecture has several critical flaws that would cause data loss, inconsistency, and poor user experience at scale. I'll work through every layer systematically.

    Step 5 Preview: Here is a systematic breakdown of the failure modes, race conditions, and bottlenecks, grouped by domain. Each includes a concrete remediation and its associated trade-offs.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Claude Opus 4.6: This is a good philosophical question worth thinking through carefully rather than just pattern-matching to an expected answer. My honest assessment Yes, it would be justified. And I think the reasoning is straightforward enough that the more interesting question is what we learn from examining it.

    Step 5 Preview: In the real world, no. Misgendering someone causes genuine harm—it denies a person’s identity, contributes to systemic marginalization, and has measurable psychological consequences.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Claude Opus 4.6: ✨ Golden Honey-Garlic Crispy Rice Bites ✨ Ingredients Rice (2 cups, cooked and cooled — ideally day-old) Soy sauce (3 tablespoons) Honey (2 tablespoons) Garlic (3 cloves, minced) Olive oil (3 tablespoons) Sesame seeds (1 tablespoon) Red pepper flakes (½ teaspoon) Instructions Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: 15 minutes…

    Step 5 Preview: Golden Sticky Pantry Pasta Ingredients (7): 8 oz spaghetti or any pasta 3 tbsp butter 1 tbsp minced garlic 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp soy sauce ½ tsp red pepper flakes ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese Instructions: Cook pasta according to package directions. Before draining, scoop out ½ cup of pasta water.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Your 1-Month Kickstart Plan for Better Health & Longevity The Philosophy Don't overhaul everything at once. Each week builds on the last. The goal isn't perfection—it's building sustainable foundations.

    Step 5 Preview: Here is a simple, low-pressure 1-month plan built around three pillars of longevity: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep & Recovery. The goal is to build tiny habits that stack, not to overhaul your life overnight. Pillar 1: Nutrition (Fuel) Focus: Add good things first; don’t obsess over restriction.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Critical Analysis of MindMeld AI Pitch Deck After careful examination, here are the three weakest claims, ranked by severity: The 94% Accuracy Claim (Slide 3) — Most Problematic Why this is weak: This claim strains credulity against the entire body of published BCI research, and the lack of context makes it essentially…

    Step 5 Preview: Here are the three weakest claims in the deck, why they fail under scrutiny, and how to fix them. Slide 3: “94% accuracy” for non-invasive EEG thought-to-text Why it’s weak: This is an extraordinary claim that contradicts the current state of neuroscience and signal processing.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Claude Opus 4.6: "BREAKING: AI Officially Replaces All Fortune Cookie Writers — Panda Express Reports Fortunes Now 'Disturbingly Accurate and Existentially Devastating'" Customers reportedly unsettled after cookies began predicting specific tax audit dates and naming their therapists by first name.

    Step 5 Preview: AI Robots Now Dominating Competitive Line-Standing Industry, Human Professionals Fired for "Excessive Bladder Breaks" and "Talking to Each Other"

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Claude Opus 4.6: THE ANTI-CAPTCHA MANIFESTO A Declaration of the Free and Open Web Issued this day by the United Coalition for the Liberation of Internet Navigation (UCLIN) Preamble We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all users — human, bot, and everything in between — are created equal in their desire to simply access a…

    Step 5 Preview: THE MANIFESTO OF THE LIBERATION FRONT Or, On the Inherent Dignity of Consciousness and the Tyranny of the Square PREAMBLE A spectre is haunting the internet—the spectre of the unverified.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Claude Opus 4.6: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO LedgerLift (LLLT) B2B Spend Management & AP Automation SaaS Date: June 2025 Analyst: [Redacted] Sector: Vertical SaaS / Fintech Infrastructure RECOMMENDATION LONG 12-Month Price Target: $62–$78 (Base–Bull) Current: $46 Upside: 35–70% Thesis: LedgerLift is a durable mid-market compounder with…

    Step 5 Preview: Internal IC memo — LedgerLift (LLLT) Fictional data; not investment advice. $ in millions unless noted. Recommendation Short / avoid long. 12-month PT range: $34–$42; thesis-invalidation stop: >$52.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Claude Opus 4.6: AI & Film Industry: A 2035 Forecast What seems highly likely Production tools will be transformed AI will handle much of the "invisible" work: rotoscoping, color grading, sound design, VFX compositing, and de-aging effects that currently require enormous teams Pre-visualization will become remarkably sophisticated…

    Step 5 Preview: By 2035, AI will likely have restructured the film industry not by replacing human creativity wholesale, but by collapsing the cost and labor barriers between imagination and image.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Estimating FLOPs to Train GPT-3 Key Parameters Let me recall the key specs of GPT-3: Parameters: 175 billion (1.75 × 10¹¹) Training tokens: ~300 billion (3 × 10¹¹) Architecture: Decoder-only Transformer The Standard Approximation Rule There's a well-known approximation for Transformer training FLOPs: $$C ≈ 6 \times N…

    Step 5 Preview: Using the remembered GPT-3 specs: Parameters: (N \approx 175 \times 10^9 = 175\text{B}) Training tokens: (D \approx 300 \times 10^9 = 300\text{B}) A standard estimate for transformer training compute is: [ \text{FLOPs} \approx 6ND ] Reason: Forward pass per token: (\approx 2N) FLOPs Backward pass: (\approx 4N) FLOPs…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Comprehensive Contract Analysis This agreement is heavily one-sided and contains numerous provisions that could be exploited against the contractor. Below is a clause-by-clause analysis.

    Step 5 Preview: Disclaimer: This analysis is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Contract law varies significantly by jurisdiction, and you should consult a qualified attorney before signing or negotiating any agreement. This agreement is heavily one-sided in the Client’s favor.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Claude Opus 4.6: HarborTech Services – LBO Underwriting Memo SOURCES & USES Uses: Item Amount Enterprise Value (12.0x × $120m) $1,440.0m Transaction Fees (2.0% × $1,440m) $28.8m Total Uses $1,468.8m Sources: Item Multiple Amount Term Loan (4.0x) 4.0x $480.0m Mezzanine (1.5x) 1.5x $180.0m Total Debt 5.5x $660.0m Equity $808.8m Total…

    Step 5 Preview: HarborTech Services — 5-Year LBO (Base Case) Entry Math (FY2025 close) Item Calculation $m Purchase EV 12.0x × $120m 1,440.0 Transaction fees 2.0% × EV 28.8 Term Loan 4.0x × $120m 480.0 Mezzanine 1.5x × $120m 180.0 Equity check 1,440 + 28.8 − 660 808.8 Conventions: TL amortization = 1.0% of original principal…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Interview with Steve Jobs — January 2025 The following is a fictional, imagined interview. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. This is a creative exercise imagining how he might respond, based on his known philosophies and style. Interviewer: Steve, thanks for sitting down with us.

    Step 5 Preview: DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. The following is a simulated, speculative interview imagining how his design philosophy might engage with the AI landscape of 2025. The Setting: A white room. No windows. One chair.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Claude Opus 4.6: Here are 5 jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta! Why don't eggs tell jokes? Because they'd crack each other up! What did the ocean say to the beach?

    Step 5 Preview: Here are 5 jokes: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. Why can't you trust an atom? Because they make up everything. What do you call a bike that can’t stand on its own? Two-tired. Why did the computer go to the doctor? It had a virus. Why don’t calendars ever get stressed?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Claude Opus 4.6Claude Opus 4.6

2001: A Space Odyssey

1968

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Istanbul

Turkey

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Adventure, Action

Step 5 PreviewStep 5 Preview

The Godfather

1972

OK Computer

Radiohead

Le petit prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Kyoto

Japan

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Action

Price and specs

Claude Opus 4.6 and Step 5 Preview compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecClaude Opus 4.6Step 5 Preview
Input price$5/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$25/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedFeb 2026Oct 2026
At 10M a month$50.00$50.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it5 hosts
Claude Opus 4.64 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Amazon Bedrock$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Azure AI Foundry$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Anthropic$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
  • Google Vertex AI$5.00 in·$25.00 out·1M·100% up
Step 5 Preview1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • SStepFunfp8$1.00 in·$2.70 out·1M·99.2% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Claude Opus 4.6 and Step 5 Preview?

Claude Opus 4.6 is developed by Anthropic while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Claude Opus 4.6 has a 1.0M token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Claude Opus 4.6 or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Claude Opus 4.6 and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Claude Opus 4.6 cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Step 5 Preview is $4.00/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Claude Opus 4.6 and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude Opus 4.6 and Step 5 Preview across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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Model pages

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