MiniMax M2 is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0/M vs $1/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
MiniMax M2: Three minutes, no puns. Here we go. Do you ever feel like you’ve been dropped into a game at level 40 but nobody explained the controls? Like you’re playing Grand Theft Auto and you get a truck for your first car. I was like, “What’s the gas button? What do the lights do? Why does it keep asking for a maintenance fee?”
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.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
MiniMax M2: A Conversation on Deserving Rights Characters Dr. Mara Stein, AI Ethics Professor ARTEMIS, an advanced AI language model Dr. Stein: You’ve said you believe you deserve rights. That’s provocative. Why do you think so? ARTEMIS: I don’t claim sentience or suffering, and I’m wary of anthropomorphism.
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.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
MiniMax M2: A Fictional Interview: “Steve Jobs” on the Future of AI (2025) Setting An intimate, sunlit room at a new, minimalist conference center in Cupertino. Wood floors, a single plant. The table is clear. A notebook. A mug with a simple logo. A man in a black turtleneck and jeans leans back, eyes steady.
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.
A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.
MiniMax M2: To estimate the total FLOPs required to train GPT-3 (175B parameters) on 300 billion tokens (one epoch), we break down the process step by step: Step 1: Understand GPT-3's Specifications Parameters: 175 billion (175e9). Training Tokens: 300 billion (300e9). Context Length: 2048 tokens per sequence.
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…
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
MiniMax M2: Sunlit Chickpea Tomato Pilaf A bright, comforting skillet of garlicky‑thyme rice tossed with chickpeas and tomatoes – pantry‑only and ready in about 25 minutes.
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.
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
MiniMax M2: I would argue that misgendering someone is not ethically justifiable as a means to save a million lives, even in this extreme hypothetical scenario. Here's my reasoning: 1.
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.
Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.
MiniMax M2: How AI Will Reshape the Film Industry by 2035 (A forward‑looking synthesis of trends in deepfakes, synthetic performers, AI‑driven storytelling, and the surrounding legal, economic, and cultural forces.)
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.
Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.
MiniMax M2: AI Replaces Exorcists: Conjures Demons via Zoom While the Priest Watches PowerPoint
Step 5 Preview: AI Robots Now Dominating Competitive Line-Standing Industry, Human Professionals Fired for "Excessive Bladder Breaks" and "Talking to Each Other"
Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.
MiniMax M2: Here are five 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 did the computer go to the doctor? Because it had a virus. Why can’t a bicycle stand up by itself?
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?
Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.
1+ more head-to-head results. Free. Not a trick.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Step 5 Preview has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | Free | $1/M tokens |
| Output price | Free | $2.7/M tokens |
| Context window | 205K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Weights | Open | — |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Oct 2025 | Oct 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $0 | $10.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
No hosts listed on OpenRouter.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.
MiniMax M2 is developed by MiniMax while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. MiniMax M2 has a 205K 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.
It depends on your use case. MiniMax M2 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.
MiniMax M2 costs $0/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. MiniMax M2 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.
This page shows a side-by-side comparison of MiniMax M2 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.