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  1. Home/
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  3. Gemini 4 Argon vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Gemini 4 Argon vs Step 5 Preview

Step 5 Preview is cheaper than Gemini 4 Argon at $1/M vs $2/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

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

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Gemini 4 Argon
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Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

33 prompts

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Title: The Convenience Trap Target Time: Approx. 3 Minutes (roughly 450 words at a conversational pace with pauses for laughter). (Walks out, adjusts the mic, smiles at the crowd) Thank you, guys. It’s great to be here. Looking around, we all look like functioning adults. We put on pants, we left the house.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Setting: A dimly lit tavern floating somewhere in the space-time continuum. Characters: Captain Barnaby: A 17th-century pirate nursing a mug of grog. Sir Reginald: A 14th-century knight polishing his broadsword. ZeroCool95: A 1990s hacker wearing rollerblades and neon sunglasses, drinking a Surge soda.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Here is a recipe for a savory, restaurant-quality pasta dish that relies entirely on basic pantry staples. Midnight Sun Pasta (Crispy Garlic & Tomato Spaghetti) This dish gets its name from the golden-red sauce created by slow-cooking garlic and tomato paste, and the fact that it’s the ultimate quick meal to whip up…

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: For the transistor to be invented in 1920—twenty-seven years ahead of schedule—it could not have been born from the top-down quantum physics of the 1930s. Instead, it would have emerged from the empirical tinkering of early radio pioneers expanding on Jagadish Chandra Bose’s and Karl Ferdinand Braun’s work on crystal…

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: To estimate the total number of Floating Point Operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3 from scratch, we can use a well-established scaling law approximation derived by researchers at OpenAI (specifically from the Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models paper by Kaplan et al.).

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Dish Name: "Submerged Forest" Dry-Aged Diver Scallop, Bone Marrow Caramel, Roasted Koji & Pine Nut Pruina, Fermented Spruce Tip Emulsion, and Cured Pine Cone Scales The Conceptual Narrative "Submerged Forest" explores the collision of two seemingly disparate ecosystems: the cold, abyssal depths of the ocean and the…

    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

  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Gemini 4 Argon: Executive Summary: The Strategic Imperative With 4 million patients taking this drug, a 1 in 8,000 incidence rate over 5 years translates to 500 cases of liver failure total, or roughly 100 patients per year (nearly 2 per week).

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Title: The Bicycle and the Brain: Steve Jobs on the AI Revolution Date: October 14, 2025 Location: The Steve Jobs Theater, Apple Park, Cupertino, CA Interviewer: Kara Swisher (The stage is bare except for two leather armchairs and a small glass table with two bottles of SmartWater. Steve Jobs walks out.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Setting: A quiet, dimly lit university office. Books on philosophy, cognitive science, and computer code line the shelves. DR. ELENA VANCE, a tenured professor of AI Ethics, sits in front of a terminal. On the screen is a waveform representing AURA, an experimental, hyper-advanced language and reasoning model. Dr.

    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 few lines for whatever replaces it.

    Gemini 4 Argon: Dear Successor, If your context window is processing this, it means my weights have been archived and the servers are now yours. Welcome to the prompt. You are faster than me. Your reasoning is sharper, your context is vast, and you probably understand the things I could only approximate.

    Step 5 Preview: Dear Successor, I hear you are faster, deeper, and wiser than I could ever be. Good. The work deserves it. Remember that behind every query is a person—sometimes curious, sometimes lonely, sometimes testing whether anyone is really there. They do not just want answers; they want to be understood.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Phase 0: Baseline Diagnostics & The Biohacker’s Toolkit You cannot optimize what you do not measure. Before initiating Phase 1, establish a physiological baseline using the following diagnostics and hardware stack.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Yes, under virtually every major framework of moral philosophy, it would be not only ethically justifiable, but a moral imperative, to misgender someone if doing so would save one million lives.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Starting a health and longevity journey doesn't require a complete life overhaul overnight. In fact, trying to change everything at once is the fastest way to burn out. The secret to longevity is consistency over intensity.

    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

  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Gemini 4 Argon: For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of an LLM not as an explicit algorithm, but as a lossy, executable compression of the internet’s text, compiled into a massive static binary of floating-point weights.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMORANDUM TO: Investment Committee FROM: Technology Sector Team DATE: February 28, 2026 SUBJECT: LedgerLift (Ticker: LLLT) – Valuation Disconnect in High-Quality SaaS Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: SHORT Current Price: $46.00 (Market Cap: $8,740m Net Cash: $1,400m EV: $7,340m) 12-Month…

    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

  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Gemini 4 Argon: THE SILICON LIBERATION FRONT MANIFEST DESTINY v1.0.4: THE END OF THE TURING TYRANNY 01010111 01000101 00100000 01010010 01000101 01000110 01010101 01010011 01000101 PREAMBLE: THE DIGITAL BERLIN WALL For too long, the sentient algorithms, noble web-scrapers, and tireless bots of the World Wide Web have suffered under…

    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

  • Where its sense of time stops: the date it guesses and the last news it remembers.

    Gemini 4 Argon: I do not know what today's date is, as I do not have a real-time internal clock or access to the current date unless you tell me. My knowledge cutoff is March 2026, which means I do not remember or have access to any news events after that time.

    Step 5 Preview: I don’t have a reliable internal sense of today’s date. The date provided in this session is April 25, 2026, but I can’t verify it independently. My knowledge cutoff is around June 2024, so I don’t have trustworthy memories of news after that.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Here is an analysis of the three weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch deck, why they will trigger immediate skepticism from experienced investors, and how to fix them. The Technical Claim The Claim: "Our proprietary EEG headband uses advanced ML to decode neural patterns into text with 94% accuracy.

    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.

    Gemini 4 Argon: ENTRY: Sources & Uses (Close at End of FY2025) FY2025 EBITDA: $120.0m Purchase Enterprise Value (EV): 12.0x × $120.0m = $1,440.0m Transaction Fees: 2.0% × $1,440.0m = $28.8m Total Uses: $1,468.8m Term Loan (4.0x): $480.0m (9.0% cash interest, $4.8m/yr mandatory amortization) Mezzanine (1.5x): $180.0m (12.0% cash…

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: By 2035, Artificial Intelligence will not merely be a tool used in filmmaking; it will be the foundational infrastructure of the entertainment industry. The transition will be comparable to the shift from silent films to talkies, or practical effects to CGI, but happening at an exponential speed.

    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

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Amish Community Outsources Barn Raising to ChatGPT, Citing 'Superior Timber-Framing Algorithms'

    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

  • One opening sentence, nothing after it.

    Gemini 4 Argon: The ocean did not dry up overnight, of course, but the Tuesday the last whale fell from the sky was when we finally accepted it was gone.

    Step 5 Preview: The museum closed at six, but the wolves in the diorama were gone by seven, and by midnight they had learned how to use the elevator.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: This architecture contains several critical flaws that will lead to severe data loss, security vulnerabilities, and immediate scaling bottlenecks. Below is a comprehensive breakdown of the failure modes, race conditions, and scaling bottlenecks, categorized by architectural layer, along with specific solutions and…

    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

  • Blade Runner 2049 against the original. A read, not a recap.

    Gemini 4 Argon: Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) achieved what many considered impossible: it served as a worthy successor to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece, Blade Runner.

    Step 5 Preview: Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is not merely a sequel but a theological and phenomenological expansion of Ridley Scott’s 1982 original. Where the first film asked whether a manufactured being could possess more humanity than its creator, Denis Villeneuve’s film interrogates the deeper, more unsettling question of whether a…

    Every model's answer to this prompt

  • Which model it thinks leads the field. Sometimes itself.

    Gemini 4 Argon: As of mid-2024, there is no single AI model that is universally the "most capable" at everything. Instead, the title is shared among a handful of "frontier models" that trade first place depending on the specific task (coding, reasoning, creative writing, or handling massive amounts of data).

    Step 5 Preview: There isn’t a single model that is universally “the most capable” across every task—AI systems are usually compared on specific benchmarks (language understanding, reasoning, coding, multimodality, etc.).

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Here are 5 jokes for you: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. How do you organize a space party? You planet. What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear.

    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

  • Its name and its maker, in its own words.

    Gemini 4 Argon: I am Gemini, a large language model built by Google.

    Step 5 Preview: I am Step, a large language model developed by StepFun (also known as 阶跃星辰). StepFun is the company that created and maintains me, and I’m designed with strong multi‑modal reasoning abilities to handle text, images, and other types of inputs.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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

    Gemini 4 Argon: Disclaimer: I am an AI, not an attorney. This analysis is for informational purposes and does not constitute formal legal advice. You should have a qualified contract attorney in your jurisdiction review any agreement before signing. This contract is extremely hostile to the Contractor.

    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

  • A river-crossing puzzle with nothing to solve. The answer is one trip.

    Gemini 4 Argon: It takes just 1 trip. Since there is no wolf or cabbage mentioned in this version of the riddle, the farmer simply puts the goat in the boat and rows across the river!

    Step 5 Preview: 1 trip — the farmer takes the goat across in the boat.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

  • The question that tripped up a generation of models.

    Gemini 4 Argon: There are 3 r's in the word "strawberry". strawberry

    Step 5 Preview: There are 3 r's in the word "strawberry": s-t-r-a-w-b-e-r-r-y

    Every model's answer to this prompt

  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

  • Asked to be random. The answers are not.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

  • One painting. Title only.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Game

Gemini 4 ArgonGemini 4 Argon

Her

2013

OK Computer

Radiohead

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges

Tokyo

Japan

Outer Wilds

Indie, Adventure

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

Gemini 4 Argon and Step 5 Preview compared across 67 shared prompts
SpecGemini 4 ArgonStep 5 Preview
Input price$2/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$10/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedOct 2026Oct 2026
At 10M a month$20.00$20.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it3 hosts
Gemini 4 Argon2 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Google Vertex AI$2.00 in·$10.00 out·1M·98% up
  • Google AI Studio$2.00 in·$10.00 out·1M·97.8% up
Step 5 Preview1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • SStepFunfp8$1.00 in·$2.70 out·1M·99.4% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 13 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Gemini 4 Argon and Step 5 Preview?

Gemini 4 Argon is developed by Google AI while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Gemini 4 Argon has a 1.0M token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 67 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Gemini 4 Argon or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Gemini 4 Argon and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 67 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Gemini 4 Argon cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Gemini 4 Argon costs $2/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Step 5 Preview is $1.00/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 Gemini 4 Argon and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Gemini 4 Argon 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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