Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Step 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 66 to 59. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Step 3.5 Flash's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 78.3 against 68.3. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MuSR, 82 to 66.
Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Llama 3.1 405B.
Pick Step 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Llama 3.1 405B only becomes the better choice if its workflow or ecosystem matters more than the raw scoreboard.
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Llama 3.1 405B
53.9
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Llama 3.1 405B
40.6
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Llama 3.1 405B
62.3
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Llama 3.1 405B
68.3
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Llama 3.1 405B
53.2
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Llama 3.1 405B
86
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Llama 3.1 405B
80.1
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Llama 3.1 405B
74.9
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 59. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MuSR, where the scores are 82 and 66.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 53.2. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.1 versus 40.6. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 84.5 versus 74.9. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 68.3. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.2 versus 53.9. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 66.7 versus 62.3. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 86. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 80.1. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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