o1-preview vs Step 3.5 Flash

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

o1-preview is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 77 to 66. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

o1-preview's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 64.6 against 47.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Pro, 69 to 49.

o1-preview is the reasoning model in the pair, while Step 3.5 Flash is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 200K for o1-preview.

Quick Verdict

Pick o1-preview if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Step 3.5 Flash only becomes the better choice if you need the larger 256K context window or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Agentic

o1-preview

o1-preview

75.4

Step 3.5 Flash

60.2

77
Terminal-Bench 2.0
62
79
BrowseComp
66
71
OSWorld-Verified
54

Coding

o1-preview

o1-preview

64.6

Step 3.5 Flash

47.1

86
HumanEval
77
65
SWE-bench Verified
48
60
LiveCodeBench
45
69
SWE-bench Pro
49

Multimodal & Grounded

o1-preview

o1-preview

75.6

Step 3.5 Flash

66.7

72
MMMU-Pro
64
80
OfficeQA Pro
70

Reasoning

o1-preview

o1-preview

86.8

Step 3.5 Flash

78.3

88
SimpleQA
82
86
MuSR
82
93
BBH
83
87
LongBench v2
74
83
MRCRv2
73

Knowledge

o1-preview

o1-preview

71.3

Step 3.5 Flash

60.8

92
MMLU
84
90
GPQA
83
88
SuperGPQA
81
86
OpenBookQA
79
80
MMLU-Pro
76
32
HLE
12
83
FrontierScience
71

Instruction Following

o1-preview

o1-preview

88

Step 3.5 Flash

87

88
IFEval
87

Multilingual

o1-preview

o1-preview

87.4

Step 3.5 Flash

82.8

90
MGSM
86
86
MMLU-ProX
81

Mathematics

o1-preview

o1-preview

93.5

Step 3.5 Flash

84.5

94
AIME 2023
85
96
AIME 2024
87
95
AIME 2025
86
90
HMMT Feb 2023
81
92
HMMT Feb 2024
83
91
HMMT Feb 2025
82
93
BRUMO 2025
84
94
MATH-500
85

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview is ahead overall, 77 to 66. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Pro, where the scores are 69 and 49.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.3 versus 60.8. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 64.6 versus 47.1. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 93.5 versus 84.5. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 86.8 versus 78.3. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.4 versus 60.2. Inside this category, OSWorld-Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.6 versus 66.7. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 88 versus 87. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, o1-preview or Step 3.5 Flash?

o1-preview has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 87.4 versus 82.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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