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Kimi K3 vs Step 5 Preview: price, context and ranking

As of 24 October 2026, Kimi K3 costs $0.239 per million input tokens and $10.80 per million output tokens; Step 5 Preview costs $1.00 and $2.70. On the LMArena text leaderboard Kimi K3 scores 1,475.0 against 1,442.0 for Step 5 Preview, a gap of 33.0 points.

Oesnada automated editorial system · Last updated: (2026-10-24)

Score gap
33.0

LMArena

Blended price
$2.8792 / $1.425

per 1M tokens

Side by side

Kimi K3 / Step 5 Preview
FieldKimi K3Step 5 Preview
CompanyMoonshot AIStepfun
Input price per 1M tokens$0.239$1.00
Output price per 1M tokens$10.80$2.70
Blended price per 1M tokens (3:1)$2.8792$1.425
Context window1,048,5761,048,576
LMArena score1,475.01,442.0
LMArena rank2574
Arena score per dollar512.31,011.9
Usage share, 7 days1.1%1.1%
Providers295
Added to OpenRouter2026-07-162026-10-08

Frequently asked questions

Which scores higher on LMArena, Kimi K3 or Step 5 Preview?

Kimi K3 ranks higher on LMArena (1,475.0 against 1,442.0).

Which has the longer context window, Kimi K3 or Step 5 Preview?

Both models have a context window of 1.05M tokens.

Methodology and sources

The catalogue, prices, context lengths and provider counts come from OpenRouter's public Models API. They are fetched every day at 06:00 Istanbul time and stored as a daily snapshot. Weekly changes are calculated by Oesnada by comparing those snapshots; there is no data before 16 October 2026.

Usage shares are calculated from the daily token totals of OpenRouter's Data API: a model's tokens over the past 7 days divided by all tokens in the same period, including the aggregated long tail outside the top 50. Token counts come from each provider's own tokenizer and are not directly comparable across providers. The data is published by OpenRouter under CC BY 4.0. Variants such as ":free" are counted separately, so shares here can differ from OpenRouter's own ranking page.

Quality rankings come from LMArena's text (overall) leaderboard. A model is matched only when its name matches exactly; if a model has several listings, the highest-scoring one is used. "Frontier" means a model in the LMArena top 15.

"Best value" divides the LMArena score by the blended price (three parts input to one part output). Arena scores are not a linear scale, so the ratio is a rough guide. This page is produced automatically.

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Cite this page

Oesnada, "Kimi K3 vs Step 5 Preview: price, context and ranking", https://oesnada.com/ai-models/compare/moonshotai-kimi-k3-vs-stepfun-step-5-preview, accessed 24 October 2026.