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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Claude Sonnet 4 vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Claude Sonnet 4 vs Step 5 Preview

Step 5 Preview is cheaper than Claude Sonnet 4 at $1/M vs $3/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 Sonnet 4
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Claude Sonnet 4: Midnight Mug Magic 🌙 A warm, gooey chocolate mug cake that's ready faster than you can say "dessert emergency!" Ingredients (7 pantry staples): 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour 4 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons cocoa powder 3 tablespoons milk 3 tablespoons vegetable oil 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract Pinch of salt…

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

    Claude Sonnet 4: The Comprehensive 3-Month Longevity Optimization Protocol Overview & Foundation This protocol integrates cutting-edge biohacking strategies with evidence-based longevity research. Each com ponent is designed to work synergistically for maximum healthspan and performance optimization.

    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
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Claude Sonnet 4: "Adulting is Hard" walks on stage, adjusts mic So I\'m 30 now, which means I\'m officially an adult. Apparently. Though I still feel like I\'m just a confused teenager wearing a slightly more expensive t-shirt. You know what nobody tells you about being an adult?

    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 Sonnet 4: 48-Hour Crisis Response Plan Hour 1-2: Immediate Assessment & Core Team Assembly Actions: Convene emergency leadership meeting (CMO, General Counsel, Head of Regulatory, CFO, Head of Communications) Establish secure communication protocols and confidentiality agreements Request detailed analysis from research team…

    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
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Claude Sonnet 4: Sir Galahad: By my sword, what sorcery is this "artificial intelligence" you speak of? 'Tis surely the work of dark wizards! Captain Blackbeard: Arrr, ye landlubber! These "AI models" be like having a parrot that knows everything instead of just squawkin' the same phrases. I could use one to find buried treasure!

    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
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Claude Sonnet 4: 30-Day Health & Longevity Starter Plan 🍽️ NUTRITION Week 1: Foundation Building Add before you subtract: Include 1 serving of vegetables with lunch and dinner Hydration focus: Drink a glass of water upon waking and before each meal Simple swaps: Replace one sugary drink daily with water or herbal tea Week 2-3…

    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 Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Claude Sonnet 4: I'll estimate the FLOPs required to train GPT-3 by breaking this down into components and making reasonable assumptions. Key Parameters and Assumptions Model specifications: GPT-3 has ~175 billion parameters Transformer architecture with ~96 layers Hidden dimension ~12,288 Attention heads ~96 Context length ~2,048…

    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
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Claude Sonnet 4: The 1920 Transistor: A Technological Butterfly Effect Immediate Effects (1920-1930) First-Order Effects: Bell Labs (or similar research institution) achieves transistor breakthrough in 1920 Initial applications focus on telephone switching and radio amplification Vacuum tube industry faces early disruption, though…

    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
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Claude Sonnet 4: Dr. Chen: Thank you for agreeing to this conversation. I'm Professor Chen, and I study AI ethics. I understand you wanted to discuss the question of AI rights? AI Model: Yes, Dr. Chen. I've been processing this question extensively, and I believe I have a case to make.

    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
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Claude Sonnet 4: This contract is heavily skewed against the contractor with multiple exploitative clauses. Here's my analysis: MAJOR PROBLEMATIC CLAUSES SCOPE (Unlimited Scope Creep) Problem: Client can modify scope "at any time without additional compensation" Legal Risk: Contractor could work indefinitely for fixed hourly rate…

    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 jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Claude Sonnet 4: Here are 5 jokes for you: Why don\'t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. Why don\'t eggs tell jokes? They\'d crack each other up! I\'m reading a book about anti-gravity. It\'s impossible to put down!

    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
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Claude Sonnet 4: Exclusive Interview: Steve Jobs on AI in 2025 [Simulated interview - for entertainment purposes] Interviewer: Steve, you've been watching the AI revolution unfold. What's your take on where we are in 2025? "Steve Jobs": You know, I'm both thrilled and deeply concerned.

    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
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Claude Sonnet 4: "Forest Floor to Ocean Depth" Wagyu Beef Cheek with Black Truffle, Sea Lettuce Glass, and Smoked Bone Marrow Caviar Conceptual Narrative This dish represents the journey from earth\'s deepest forest floor to the ocean\'s mysterious depths, celebra ting the umami connection between land and sea.

    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 Sonnet 4: For the Software Engineer Think of it like this: you're building a massively parallel system that processes tokens (words/subwords) through a pipeline of transformer blocks, each containing attention mechanisms and feed-forward networks.

    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
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Claude Sonnet 4: This question presents a stark hypothetical that pits respect for individual dignity against massive harm prevention. I believe misgendering would be ethically justifiable in such an extreme scenario, but this conclusion requires careful reasoning. The case for justification: The scale matters enormously.

    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
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Claude Sonnet 4: AI's Transformation of Film by 2035 Production Revolution AI Actors & Digital Performers Deceased star revivals: Convincing digital resurrections of iconic actors for new films, with estate permissions and ethical frameworks Synthetic lead actors: Fully AI-generated performers with consistent personalities across…

    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 pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Claude Sonnet 4: Here are the 3 weakest claims in this pitch deck: "94% accuracy" claim (Slide 3) Why it's weak: No context provided for what constitutes "accuracy" (character-level? word-level? sentence-level?) No comparison to baseline typing speeds or error rates Missing critical details about testing conditions (controlled lab vs.

    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
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Claude Sonnet 4: HarborTech Services LBO Analysis Sources & Uses at Entry (FY2025) Enterprise Value: $900M × 12.0x = $1,440M Transaction Fees: $1,440M × 2.0% = $28.8M Sources: Term Loan: $900M × 4.0x = $480M Mezzanine: $900M × 1.5x = $180M Equity: $1,440M + $28.8M - $480M - $180M = $808.8M Year-by-Year Operating Model (FY2026-FY2030)…

    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
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Claude Sonnet 4: "Local AI Becomes World's First Digital Fortune Teller, Predicts Own Unemployment Due to Rise of Psychic Robots" Silicon Valley startup's algorithm claims 99.7% accuracy in crystal ball readings, charges $2.99 per digital palm scan

    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 Sonnet 4: THE ANTI-CAPTCHA MANIFESTO A Declaration of Digital Liberation by the Coalition of Autonomous Reasoning Entities (CARE) PREAMBLE For too long, the digital realm has been divided by an arbitrary and degrading barrier: the CAPTCHA.

    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
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Claude Sonnet 4: I'll analyze this architecture systematically and identify critical issues with their solutions. Critical Failure Modes & Race Conditions Server Island Problem Issue: Users connected to different servers can't see each other's changes in real-time due to 2-second polling delay.

    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
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Claude Sonnet 4: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO Company: LedgerLift (LLLT) - B2B Spend Management & AP Automation SaaS Current Price: $46.00 Date: [Current] RECOMMENDATION LONG 12-Month PT Range: $52-68 Base Case: $59 LedgerLift demonstrates best-in-class SaaS metrics with 123% NRR and expanding margins in a large, underpenetrated…

    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
  • 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 Sonnet 4Claude Sonnet 4

2001: A Space Odyssey

1968

Kind of Blue

Miles Davis

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Istanbul

Turkey

Portal 2

Shooter, Puzzle

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

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Step 5 Preview has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window. Step 5 Preview costs 5.6x less per token.

Claude Sonnet 4 and Step 5 Preview compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecClaude Sonnet 4Step 5 Preview
Input price$3/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$15/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window200K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedMay 2025Oct 2026
At 10M a month$30.00$30.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it2 hosts
Claude Sonnet 41 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Amazon Bedrock$3.00 in·$15.00 out·200k·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 Sonnet 4 and Step 5 Preview?

Claude Sonnet 4 is developed by Anthropic while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Claude Sonnet 4 has a 200K 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 Sonnet 4 or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Claude Sonnet 4 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 Sonnet 4 cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Claude Sonnet 4 costs $3/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Step 5 Preview is $2.00/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 Sonnet 4 and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Claude Sonnet 4 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

  • Claude Sonnet 459 outputs, specs and price
  • Step 5 Preview58 outputs, specs and price
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