Qwen3.5 35B A3B is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0.25/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?
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: Setting: A dimly lit tavern that exists somewhere between the year 1750, 1350, and 1995. The walls are stone, but there is a CRT monitor flickering on the table. Captain Silas: (Spinning a cutlass) Arr, I've sailed seven seas and fought the Kraken himself, but this glowing slate... it speaks without a mouth.
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?
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: (Walks to the mic, adjusts the stand, looks around the room) So, I went to the grocery store yesterday. You know the drill. You walk in, you see the self-checkout lanes. And you think, "Oh, this is going to be efficient. I'm going to scan my own stuff. I'm going to be my own cashier. I'm going to be the boss."
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.
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: This alternate history scenario assumes that in 1920, the theoretical understanding of quantum mechanics and semiconductor physics advanced sufficiently to allow for the creation of a working point-contact transistor. This implies a "Great Leap Forward" in material science and physics during the interwar period.
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.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: Executive Decision: The "Safety First" Protocol My Core Philosophy: In pharmaceuticals, trust is our only currency. If we lose patient trust or regulatory standing, the $2B revenue becomes irrelevant. Hiding this data is not a business strategy; it is a liability waiting to explode.
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.
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: Disclaimer: I am an AI, not a doctor. This plan involves significant physiological manipulation, including fasting, intense exercise, and potent supplementation. You must consult with a qualified healthcare provider, specifically one knowledgeable in functional or integrative medicine, before starting.
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.
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: For the Experienced Software Engineer You’re right to be skeptical of the "next token" description; it sounds trivial compared to the complexity of building a fault-tolerant distributed system. Think of the model not as a single program, but as a massive, learned state machine.
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.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: Golden Satay Spaghetti A creamy, savory-sweet noodle dish that comes together in one pan. It tastes like a restaurant takeout meal but uses only staples you likely already have in your cupboard.
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.
Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: Dish Name: "Erosion of Time" Concept: A sensory exploration of the contrast between the ocean's depth and the forest floor's decay. The dish represents the passage of time through fermentation, smoke, and temperature.
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.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: Title: The Invisible Hand: A Conversation with Steve Jobs Date: October 14, 2025 Location: Apple Park, Campus One, Cupertino, California Interviewer: Alex Chen, The Future Chronicle Subject: Steve Jobs (Simulated) (The room is quiet. Sunlight filters through the glass walls of the main conference room.
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.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: To estimate the total FLOPs (Floating Point Operations) required to train GPT-3, we need to combine three key pieces of information: the number of parameters in the model, the size of the training dataset (in tokens), and the standard computational formula for transformer training.
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…
An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: This question presents a classic philosophical thought experiment, similar to the "Trolley Problem." It pits a specific harm (misgendering an individual) against a massive benefit (saving 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.
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B: The 1-Month Longevity Kickstart Plan Core Philosophy: Consistency beats intensity. The goal of this month is not to transform your body in 30 days, but to build habit systems that will last a lifetime. The 3 Key Pillars Nutrition: Focus on nutrient density and hydration.
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.
11+ 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 | $0.25/M tokens | $1/M tokens |
| Output price | $2/M tokens | $2.7/M tokens |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Weights | Open | — |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | Feb 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $2.50 | $10.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B is developed by Qwen while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Qwen3.5 35B A3B has a 262K token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.
It depends on your use case. Qwen3.5 35B A3B and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B costs $0.25/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Qwen3.5 35B A3B is $0.75/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 Qwen3.5 35B A3B 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.