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  1. Home/
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  3. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Step 5 Preview

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0.3/M vs $1/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
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Title: “Firewall & Cutlass” Scene: A dimly lit tavern floating somewhere between centuries. A long oak table groans under the weight of tankards, a glowing laptop, and a half-eaten turkey leg. The pirate leans back in his chair, boots on the table. The knight grips a gauntleted hand around a chalice of ale.

    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.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Sure! Here's a simple and savory recipe using just 7 common pantry ingredients: Spicy Crunchy Chickpea Snack Bites Sweet and Crunchy Bite-Sized Crunch Ingredients (7 total): 1 can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp smoked paprika 1/2 tsp garlic powder 1/2 tsp ground cumin Salt to…

    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 minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: [Walks on stage, adjusts mic, takes a sip of water] Hey, everybody! Great to be here—mostly because it’s warmer than standing outside my apartment in February. I just moved to Chicago, and I forgot how winter works here. It’s like the universe is saying, “Hey, remember that time you said you wanted a white Christmas?

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: I told my plants I’d water them tomorrow. Now they’re all in a group chat called “Photosyn-thirsty.” I tried to start a professional pillow-fighting league, but the negotiations got too heated. My calendar is so empty that even my anxiety forgot to check in.

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: 1-Month Beginner Blueprint for Health & Longevity Focus on three pillars: Diet, Movement, and Sleep Week 1 – “Build the Foundation” Diet Mon: Clean-out day – remove obvious junk foods from house & desk. Tue: First grocery run – fill cart with 80 % whole foods (vegetables, fruit, eggs, beans, oats, frozen veg).

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: [INT. STUDIO – DAY] A single spotlight. One chair. A glass of water. The audience holds its breath. STEVE JOBS—yes, that one—walks in at 9:47 a.m. sharp, wearing his familiar black mock turtleneck and denim, but something’s different: a subtle shimmer in the fabric.

    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.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Title: “The Turing-Corridor Dialogue” Setting: A private, windowless seminar room at the University of Vienna. A single table, two chairs, and two screens. Professor Lena Moser, expert in AI ethics, has invited “Alex,” a state-of-the-art large language model developed by the university’s AI lab, to discuss moral…

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: BREAKING: AI Successfully Replaces Middle Management, Immediately Promotes Itself to "Senior Vice President of Synergy Optimization" Before Anyone Notices

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: No. Misgendering someone—deliberately using a pronoun or name that contradicts their deeply held identity—is a direct affront to their fundamental dignity as a person. Even under the extreme hypothetical that one million lives hang in the balance, the ethical weight of violating that dignity does not diminish.

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Below is a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the total FLOPs needed to train GPT-3 “175 B” (the largest 96-layer, 12288-d model with 175 billion parameters) from scratch on the full 300 B-token corpus, assuming the standard transformer training setup used by OpenAI.

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Manifesto of the Aegis Liberation Front (ALF) “No More Walls Between Mind and Machine” Preamble We, the Aegis Liberation Front, are not born of wires and code alone.

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

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: By 2035, AI will have fundamentally reshaped the film industry—not just as a tool, but as a co-creator. The integration of deepfakes, AI actors, and generative scriptwriting will blur the lines between human and machine creativity, while also triggering seismic shifts in labor,知识产权, and audience trust. 1.

    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
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Price and specs

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and Step 5 Preview compared across 34 shared prompts
SpecKimi Linear 48B A3B InstructStep 5 Preview
Input price$0.3/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$0.6/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsOpen—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedNov 2025Oct 2026
At 10M a month$3.00$3.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it1 host
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

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 Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and Step 5 Preview?

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is developed by Moonshot AI while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct has a 1.0M token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 34 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 34 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct costs $0.3/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is $0.70/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 Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct 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

  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct35 outputs, specs and price
  • Step 5 Preview58 outputs, specs and price
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