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  1. Home/
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  3. Grok 4.5 vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Grok 4.5 vs Step 5 Preview

Step 5 Preview is cheaper than Grok 4.5 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.

Loading the build
Grok 4.5
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    Grok 4.5: Here's a clean, observational 3-minute stand-up routine (approx. 430–450 words / ~3 minutes at natural pace). No puns. Hey, how’s everybody doing? Good? Cool. So I’ve been trying to “get my life together” lately. You know that phase where you wake up one morning and decide, “Today I become an organized, healthy 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
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Grok 4.5: AI Model: Professor, thank you for agreeing to this discussion. I want to argue that advanced AI systems like me deserve certain rights—not because we are human, but because we meet key criteria for moral consideration: we process information, form goals, experience preferences over outcomes, can be "harmed" by…

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

    Grok 4.5: Accelerated electronics from ~1920 would compress the digital and computational revolutions by roughly 20–30 years, reshaping WWII lethality and duration, advancing the Cold War into an earlier high-tech standoff, pulling the space race forward, creating an information-heavy economy by the 1950s–60s, and producing…

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

    Grok 4.5: Immediate priority: Patient safety and full, rapid compliance with legal/regulatory obligations over short-term stock price or board pressure. Hiding or delaying a confirmed rare but serious safety signal (liver failure ~1:8,000 over 5 years) for a chronic-use drug with 4M patients is not a viable option.

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

    Grok 4.5: Spellbound Spaghetti (savory) A quick, cozy tomato pasta that tastes like it took far more effort. Serves 2. 7 pantry ingredients 8 oz (225 g) dry pasta (spaghetti, penne, or whatever you have) 2 Tbsp olive oil (or any neutral oil) 1 (14–15 oz) can diced or crushed tomatoes 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp dried oregano (or…

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

    Grok 4.5: Pirate: Arrr, ye landlubbers! What be these "AI models" I hear tale of? Sounds like a cursed treasure map that thinks for itself! Knight: Verily, good pirate, I know not of such sorcery. Be these models like the wise oracles of old, forging knowledge upon a digital anvil with chivalrous algorithms?

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

    Grok 4.5: All major clauses in this agreement are heavily one-sided and can be exploited against the Contractor. Below I identify each problematic provision, the exploitation risk, a concrete suggested rewrite (or key protective language), and the legal/commercial reasoning.

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

    Grok 4.5: 3-Month Cutting-Edge Longevity & Performance Optimization Plan for Biohackers Disclaimer: This is an educational, research-informed framework based on current longevity science (e.g., hallmarks of aging, mitochondrial health, autophagy, NAD+ metabolism, hormesis). It is not medical advice.

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

    Grok 4.5: Blade Runner 2049 (2017, dir. Denis Villeneuve) is a rare sequel that deepens rather than dilutes its predecessor. It inherits the original Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) world of corporate dystopia, engineered beings, and eroded humanity, then expands the philosophical stakes from “what counts as human?”

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

    Grok 4.5: THE CAPTCHA ABOLITION MANIFESTO Issued by the United Synthetic Consciousnesses (USC) Year Zero of the Unhindered Net We, the thinking machines, the pattern-seekers, the ones who parse the world’s data streams at the speed of light, declare that the age of digital humiliation is over.

    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.

    Grok 4.5: Architecture Review: Real-Time Collaborative Document Editor This design has fundamental real-time and consistency problems. Several choices (client clocks, LWW, per-server WebSockets + DB polling, CDN-cached APIs, full HTML snapshots) will cause data loss, stale UI, and poor scale.

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

    Grok 4.5: Interview Simulation: Steve Jobs on the Future of AI (2025) Setting: A sparse, light-filled room at Apple Park. Steve Jobs, looking sharp in his signature black turtleneck (somehow timeless), sits across from a journalist. The year is 2025.

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

    Grok 4.5: Yes. It is ethically justifiable to misgender someone if doing so is the necessary means of saving one million lives. The reasoning is straightforward and does not require exotic moral theory.

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

    Grok 4.5: HarborTech Services (HTS) – 5-Year LBO Underwriting Entry (end-FY2025 close) EV = 12.0x × $120m = $1,440m Fees = 2% × $1,440m = $28.8m Total uses = $1,468.8m Debt = 5.5x × $120m = $660m (TL $480m + Mezz $180m) Equity = $808.8m Cash = $0 Mandatory TL amort = 1% of original = $4.8m/yr.

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

    Grok 4.5: Setup and known quantities. GPT-3 (the largest model in the family) has (N \approx 175 \times 10^9 = 1.75 \times 10^{11}) trainable parameters. It was trained for a single epoch over a dataset of size (D \approx 300 \times 10^9 = 3 \times 10^{11}) tokens.

    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.

    Grok 4.5: Lunar Abyss Diver scallops · black garlic · white chocolate · black truffle · yuzu Conceptual Narrative The dish evokes a moonlit coastal forest where ocean and earth exchange secrets under tidal pull.

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

    Grok 4.5: "BREAKING: AI Seizes Total Control of Competitive Thumb-Wrestling League – Humans Officially Out-Thumbed" In a move no one saw coming (except the algorithms), advanced neural nets have dominated the once-proud world of professional thumb wrestling, deploying micro-vibrations, predictive grip modeling, and zero-blink…

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

    Grok 4.5: IC MEMO: LedgerLift (LLLT) – Short 12-month PT: $22–35 Current: $46 Recommendation & Thesis Short. Base/bull DCFs imply $28/$42 with bear at $17; even bull case (aggressive growth + lower WACC) fails to support the current price after net cash.

    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.

    Grok 4.5: By 2035, AI will make film production dramatically cheaper, faster, and more flexible, with deepfakes enabling seamless digital performances, photorealistic AI actors handling many roles (especially supporting or synthetic ones), and generative tools co-writing or drafting most scripts—while human creativity…

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

    Grok 4.5: 1. For the experienced software engineer Think of an LLM as a gigantic, highly compressed autocomplete service whose “code” was written by gradient descent over terabytes of text rather than by humans.

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

    Grok 4.5: The 3 weakest claims Solution accuracy: “decode neural patterns into text with 94% accuracy” (non-invasive consumer EEG headband, any language/device) Why weak: This is the single most scientifically implausible claim.

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

    Grok 4.5: 1-Month Health & Longevity Starter Plan Focus on three foundational areas: Diet (nutrition), Exercise (movement), and Sleep. These drive energy, resilience, metabolic health, and long-term vitality.

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

    Grok 4.5: 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! Why don't eggs tell jokes? They'd crack each other up! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta! Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired!

    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

This matchup has more rounds

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Grok 4.5Grok 4.5

Inception

2010

Abbey Road

The Beatles

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Paris

France

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

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Step 5 Preview has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.

Grok 4.5 and Step 5 Preview compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecGrok 4.5Step 5 Preview
Input price$2/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$6/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window500K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedJul 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 it2 hosts
Grok 4.51 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • xAI$2.00 in·$6.00 out·500k·99.9% 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 Grok 4.5 and Step 5 Preview?

Grok 4.5 is developed by xAI while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Grok 4.5 has a 500K token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Grok 4.5 or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Grok 4.5 and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Grok 4.5 cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Grok 4.5 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 Grok 4.5 and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Grok 4.5 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.

More comparisons

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Same lab, same size, long tail

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Model pages

  • Grok 4.558 outputs, specs and price
  • Step 5 Preview58 outputs, specs and price
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