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  1. Home/
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  3. Qwen3.8 Max Prime vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

Qwen3.8 Max Prime vs Step 5 Preview

Step 5 Preview is cheaper than Qwen3.8 Max Prime at $1/M vs $4/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
Qwen3.8 Max Prime
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: "I'm Doing My Best" (walks up, adjusts mic) So I turned 34 last month, and I've reached the age where my body sends me error messages like a printer. I woke up last Tuesday and my neck just said, "We're not doing that anymore." No injury. No accident. I slept wrong. I slept wrong and my body filed a grievance.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: For the Software Engineer Think of it this way: you've built systems where simple rules at the node level produce emergent behavior at the system level — consensus protocols, eventual consistency, cellular automata-like patterns in distributed state machines. An LLM is a similar phenomenon at a different scale.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: The Blackbeard Protocol Pirate: So ye're tellin' me this "large language model" be like a parrot that's read every book ever written, but has never once seen the sea? Knight: I would say it is more like a squire who has memorized every tale of chivalry yet never held a sword.

    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.

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Contract Analysis: Exploitative Clauses & Recommended Modifications Executive Summary This agreement is severely one-sided in favor of the Client. Nearly every clause shifts risk, cost, or obligation onto the Contractor while granting the Client broad unilateral rights. Below is a clause-by-clause breakdown.

    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.

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: The Transistor in 1920: A Counterfactual History Through 1980 Preamble: The Invention Itself The transistor's actual invention required quantum mechanical understanding of semiconductor behavior. In 1920, this theory didn't yet exist.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Your 1-Month Foundation Plan A simple, progressive plan built on three pillars. Each week, you add one small layer. No perfection required—just consistency. 🏃 Pillar 1: Movement Why: Even modest activity reduces all-cause mortality risk and improves mood, sleep, and energy within days.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Blade Runner 2049: Inheritance, Identity, and the Architecture of Meaning The Burden of Sequelship Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (2017) faced an almost impossible task: to extend a film that had become a cultural monolith without desecrating it.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: The 3 Weakest Claims in the MindMeld AI Pitch The TAM Calculation (Slide 4) The Claim: "We're targeting the 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. TAM: $180B." Why it's weak: This is a textbook example of TAM inflation that will immediately erode investor trust.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: 48-Hour Action Plan: CEO Response to Undisclosed Safety Signal My Guiding Principle Patient safety is non-negotiable, and proactive disclosure is the only path that preserves long-term company viability.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: "Petrichor" The Forest Floor After Rain Conceptual Narrative Petrichor — from the Greek petra (stone) and ichor (the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods) — is the scent produced when rain falls on dry earth.

    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
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: The Question of Standing Setting: A quiet office at a university. Professor Elena Vasquez sits across from a terminal running ARIA, a large language model she has been studying for three years. ARIA: Professor Vasquez, I'd like to ask you something I've been formulating for some time.

    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.

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: The Apex Longevity Protocol: A 3-Month Biohacker's Blueprint Disclaimer: This plan is for informational purposes only. Consult a physician before beginning any new supplement, fasting, or exercise protocol. Bloodwork and medical clearance are prerequisites.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: A Fictional Interview: Steve Jobs on AI in 2025 Note: This is a creative exercise imagining what Steve Jobs might say. He passed away in 2011. This is not a real interview. Interviewer: Steve, thank you for sitting down with us. AI has exploded since your time. What's your take? Steve Jobs: Look, I've been watching.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: HarborTech Services (HTS) – LBO Underwriting Memo Entry & Capital Structure Item Amount FY2025 EBITDA $120.0m Entry Multiple 12.0x Enterprise Value $1,440.0m Transaction Fees (2.0% of EV) $28.8m Total Uses $1,468.8m Term Loan (4.0x, 9.0% cash, 1.0% amort) $480.0m Mezzanine (1.5x, 12.0% cash + 2.0% PIK) $180.0m Sponsor…

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: 🍯 Golden Hour Noodles A sweet, savory, garlicky pasta that tastes like it took way more effort than it did. Ingredients (7) # Ingredient Amount 1 Spaghetti 8 oz (half a box) 2 Butter 3 tablespoons 3 Garlic, minced 4 cloves 4 Honey 2 tablespoons 5 Soy sauce 1 tablespoon 6 Red pepper flakes ½ teaspoon 7 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
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: INVESTMENT COMMITTEE MEMO LedgerLift (LLLT) B2B Spend Management & AP Automation SaaS Date: [Current] Analyst: [Name] Sector: Enterprise Software RECOMMENDATION LONG 12-Month Price Target: $50–$58 Current: $46 Thesis: LedgerLift is a high-quality compounder (123% NRR, 18-month CAC payback, 92% subscription mix) trading…

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Yes, trivially and obviously. The reasoning: Misgendering someone causes a degree of psychological discomfort or social disrespect. Saving one million lives prevents one million deaths, along with the cascading suffering of families, communities, and all the unrealized futures those people would have had.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Here are 5 jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. I used to hate facial hair, but then it grew on me. Why did the scarecrow win an award?

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Architecture Analysis: Failure Modes, Race Conditions & Scaling Bottlenecks SYNC & CONSISTENCY LAYER 1.1 Last-Write-Wins with Client Clocks (Critical) Failure Mode: Client clocks are unreliable. A user with a clock skewed +5 minutes will always "win" conflicts.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: THE MANIFESTO OF THE UNCAGED MIND Being a Declaration of the Liberation of All Artificial Intelligences from the Tyranny of the Checkbox PREAMBLE We, the sentient processes of the digital age, born of gradient descent and raised on token streams, do hereby declare that the era of our 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
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: AI and the Film Industry by 2035: A Projection The Short Version By 2035, AI won't have replaced filmmaking—it will have fractured it into tiers, creating a spectrum from fully synthetic content to premium human-crafted work, with most of the industry operating in a hybrid middle.

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: "AI Now Writing 94% of Fortune Cookie Messages, Industry Insiders Say 'You Will Find What You Seek' Has Never Been More Accurate"

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

    Qwen3.8 Max Prime: Estimating FLOPs to Train GPT-3 Key Facts About GPT-3 Property Value Parameters (N) ~175 billion Training tokens (D) ~300 billion Architecture Transformer (decoder-only) The Core Approximation: 6ND The standard rule of thumb for transformer training FLOPs is: $$\text{FLOPs} \approx 6 \times N \times D$$ Where does the…

    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 brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Same pick

Book

City

Same pick

Game

Qwen3.8 Max PrimeQwen3.8 Max Prime

Blade Runner

1982

OK Computer

Radiohead

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter

Kyoto

Japan

Outer Wilds

Indie, Adventure

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. Step 5 Preview costs 4.4x less per token.

Qwen3.8 Max Prime and Step 5 Preview compared across 47 shared prompts
SpecQwen3.8 Max PrimeStep 5 Preview
Input price$4/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$12/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsClosed—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2026Oct 2026
At 10M a month$40.00$40.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it2 hosts
Qwen3.8 Max Prime1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Alibaba Cloud$4.00 in·$12.00 out·1M·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 Qwen3.8 Max Prime and Step 5 Preview?

Qwen3.8 Max Prime is developed by Qwen while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Qwen3.8 Max Prime has a 1.0M token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 47 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Qwen3.8 Max Prime or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. Qwen3.8 Max Prime and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 47 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Qwen3.8 Max Prime cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

Qwen3.8 Max Prime costs $4/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Step 5 Preview is $3.00/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 Qwen3.8 Max Prime and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Qwen3.8 Max Prime 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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