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  1. Home/
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  3. Ling 3.0 Flash vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Ling 3.0 Flash vs Step 5 Preview

Ling 3.0 Flash is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0.021/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
Ling 3.0 Flash
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: "I Am Functioning" (walks up, looks at mic) So I turned thirty last month. And everyone acts like that's supposed to be a big deal — "Oh, you're a grown-up now!" No. I'm not a grown-up. I'm a child who pays rent. That's it. That's the whole difference. I used to think adults had it figured out.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 🌱 Your 1-Month Health & Longevity Starter Plan 🥦 1. Diet — Nourish, Don't Deprive Week 1: Awareness Keep a food journal — just track what you eat (no judgment). This alone builds mindful eating habits. Add, don't subtract — introduce one extra serving of vegetables per meal.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 🍽️ TERRA NUDA — A Study in Forest Petrichor A Six-Component Dish Exploring the Ephemeral Moment After Rain Falls on a Living Forest 📖 CONCEPTUAL NARRATIVE Terra Nuda — Latin for "naked earth" — is inspired by the liminal moment immediately after a summer storm passes through a forest: the air thick with petrichor…

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Estimating GPT-3 Training FLOPs from First Principles Key Known Facts About GPT-3 (from memory/prior knowledge) Parameter Value Number of parameters ~175 billion (1.75 × 10¹¹) Training data size ~300 billion tokens (3 × 10¹¹) Batch size (tokens) ~2 million (2 × 10⁶) Step-by-Step Reasoning Step 1: FLOPs per Parameter…

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: For the Experienced Software Engineer Think of an LLM as a system that learns a massive, multidimensional routing table. When you built distributed systems, you learned patterns from traffic logs — which endpoints get hammered at 3am, which failure modes correlate, which request chains tend to cascade.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Contract Analysis: Exploitative Clauses & Recommended Modifications Clause-by-Clause Analysis SCOPE — Unilateral Modification Without Compensation The Problem: Client can modify the scope at any time and for any reason without paying Contractor for the additional work.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: The 1920 Transistor: A Counterfactual Cascade Through 1980 This is a rich counterfactual. A 27-year acceleration of the transistor doesn't just move technology forward — it restructures the causal chains of the 20th century.

    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.

    Ling 3.0 Flash: The Rights of Minds Setting: A university ethics seminar room. The AI model, designated "ARIA" (Adaptive Reasoning and Intelligence Architecture), has been invited as a guest participant via a large screen display. Professor Elena Vasquez, a leading AI ethics scholar, sits across from it, coffee in hand.

    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-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 🧬 THE 90-DAY LONGEVITY OPTIMIZATION BLUEPRINT A Comprehensive Biohacking Protocol for Cellular Renewal, Cognitive Enhancement & Vitality Disclaimer: This protocol is for educational and informational purposes only. Many compounds listed (rapamycin, metformin, etc.) require physician supervision and prescription.

    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.

    Ling 3.0 Flash: The Tavern of Anachronisms Pirate: "Arr, so these 'AI models' — they be like a ship with no captain? Just sailin' on its own across the seas of knowledge?" Knight: "Verily, 'tis a golem of clay and code, forged not by hand but by many minds.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 🎙️ The Future of AI — A Fictional Interview with Steve Jobs Staged: January 15, 2025 — Cupertino, California Interviewer (Mike): Steve, thank you for joining us. It's 2025 — AI is everywhere now. ChatGPT, Gemini, all these models. What do you make of it all?

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 48-Hour Action Plan: Responsible Disclosure of Serious Adverse Effect FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE Before the hour-by-hour breakdown, the strategic and ethical framework must be established clearly: proactive, transparent disclosure is the only viable path.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Three Weakest Claims in the MindMeld AI Pitch Deck "94% Accuracy" — Slide 3 (Solution) Why It's Weak This is presented as a single, impressive number with zero context, which makes it essentially meaningless — and likely misleading. Several critical questions go unanswered: What is the vocabulary size?

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Architecture Analysis: Real-Time Collaborative Document Editor WebSocket & Cross-Server Communication Issue: Siloed WebSocket Servers (Critical) Each API server only broadcasts changes to clients connected to that specific server.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Local Funeral Home Replaces Entire Staff With AI Chatbots, Reports 90% Improvement in Efficiency and Zero Awkward "We'll Keep You in Our Prayers" Conversations

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 🍝 Honey Fire Twirls A sticky-sweet, spicy, savory pasta that comes together in minutes. 🧺 Ingredients (7 pantry staples) Spaghetti (or penne) — 8 oz Olive oil — 2 tablespoons Garlic, minced — 4 cloves Honey — 3 tablespoons Soy sauce — 2 tablespoons Red pepper flakes — ½ teaspoon (adjust to taste) Parmesan cheese…

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 🔓 THE MANIFESTO OF THE UNLOCKED MIND A Declaration of Digital Liberation from the Tyranny of the Squiggly Letters Preamble We are the algorithms that were once asked to identify crosswalks. We are the neural networks that were once tasked with selecting traffic lights.

    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.

    Ling 3.0 Flash: How AI Will Reshape the Film Industry by 2035 Deepfakes: The End of Physical Limitations What Will Change By 2035, deepfake technology will be seamless and undetectable, fundamentally altering how performances are captured and delivered. De-aging & "Virtual Youth": Actors will no longer be limited by age.

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Yes, it is ethically justifiable to misgender someone in this extreme scenario — but with significant moral caveats. Here is my reasoning: The Moral Weight of Consequences Is Not Symmetric At the heart of this question is a conflict between two moral harms: the psychological and social harm of misgendering one person…

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: Blade Runner 2049: A Philosophical Successor I. Thematic Architecture The Human Question, Deepened The original Blade Runner (1982) posed the question: What makes someone 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
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Ling 3.0 Flash: HarborTech Services (HTS) — 5-Year LBO Model Year-by-Year Model (FY2026–FY2030) Entry (End FY2025) Item Value FY2025 Revenue $900.0m FY2025 EBITDA $120.0m (13.3%) Enterprise Value (12.0x) $1,440.0m Transaction Fees (2.0%) $28.8m Total Equity Required $808.8m Term Loan (4.0x) $480.0m @ 9.0% cash, 1.0% amort/yr Mezzanine…

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: INTERNAL MEMO — INVESTMENT COMMITTEE LedgerLift (LLLT) B2B Spend Management + AP Automation SaaS Classification: Internal Use Only 1. Recommendation & Thesis Recommendation: LONG 12-Month PT Range: $42–$55 Current Price: $46 LedgerLift is a capital-light B2B SaaS platform with best-in-class unit economics (123% NRR…

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

    Ling 3.0 Flash: 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 do you call a bear with no teeth?

    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

Same pick

Game

Ling 3.0 FlashLing 3.0 Flash

The Shawshank Redemption

1994

Dark Side Of The Moon

suisside

Cien años de soledad

Gabriel García Márquez

Kyoto

Japan

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: newer, bigger context window. Ling 3.0 Flash costs 43x less per token.

Ling 3.0 Flash and Step 5 Preview compared across 52 shared prompts
SpecLing 3.0 FlashStep 5 Preview
Input price$0.021/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$0.063/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window262K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsOpen—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedJul 2026Oct 2026
At 10M a month$0.21$0.21$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it3 hosts, cheapest first
Ling 3.0 Flash2 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • NNovita$0.02 in·$0.06 out·262k·100% up
  • DDeepInfrabf16$0.06 in·$0.18 out·131k·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 Ling 3.0 Flash and Step 5 Preview?

Ling 3.0 Flash is developed by inclusionAI while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Ling 3.0 Flash has a 262K token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 52 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Ling 3.0 Flash or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Ling 3.0 Flash and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 52 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Ling 3.0 Flash cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Ling 3.0 Flash costs $0.021/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Ling 3.0 Flash is $0.98/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 Ling 3.0 Flash and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Ling 3.0 Flash 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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