# dots3-note Preview vs Step 5 Preview

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for dots3-note Preview and Step 5 Preview across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-step-5-preview
- Last updated: September 21, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 7
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Step 5 Preview if you want the stronger benchmark profile. dots3-note Preview only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Step 5 Preview leads overall 72 to 64.32.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 68.3 for dots3-note Preview and 78.5 for Step 5 Preview.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Toolathlon-Verified in Agentic, with scores of 55.6% and 74.1%.
- dots3-note Preview is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Step 5 Preview also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Dots Studio | StepFun |
| Type | Open Weight | Pending |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 512K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 64.32 | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 31 | 22 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $1.00 / $2.70 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 59.4 (Estimated · #26/154)
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Claw-Eval | 73.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | 85.0% | Step 5 Preview |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 55.6% | 74.1% | Step 5 Preview |
| skillsBench | 52.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| APEX-Agents | 30.8% | 37.8% | Step 5 Preview |
| BrowseComp | 83.3% | 88.7% | Step 5 Preview |
| HLE w/ tools | 52.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 92.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 78.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | Coming soon | 33.30% | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | Coming soon | 84.7% | Coming soon |
| AutomationBench | Coming soon | 44.0% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 85.6% | Coming soon |
| JobBench | Coming soon | 59.0% | Coming soon |
| DRACO | Coming soon | 83.3% | Coming soon |
| Agents' Last Exam | Coming soon | 29.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 57.6 (Estimated · #32/156)
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Codeforces | 3056.0 | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 91.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | 85.0% | Step 5 Preview |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 75.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 61% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | 49.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 67.7% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 58.9% | Coming soon |
| ProgramBench | Coming soon | 80.5% | Coming soon |
| sweMarathon | Coming soon | 72.7% | Coming soon |
| MLS-Bench Lite | Coming soon | 40.5% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 68.3 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: 78.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 81.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CritPt | Coming soon | 20.9% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 66.2 (Unranked · 10 rankable rows)
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: 61.2 (#28/49)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SimpleVQA | 72.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.1% | 76% | dots3-note Preview |
| MathVision | 87.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | 19.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 83.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GDP.pdf (no tools) | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | 53.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | 50.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMVU | 79.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | 86.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 60.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 58.2 (Estimated · #41/186)
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 52.6% | 46.5% | dots3-note Preview |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 93.5% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 85.2 (#37/124)
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFEval | 93.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Step 5 Preview public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Step 5 Preview | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IMOAnswerBench | 90.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, dots3-note Preview or Step 5 Preview?

Step 5 Preview is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between dots3-note Preview and Step 5 Preview?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 68.3 for dots3-note Preview and 78.5 for Step 5 Preview.

### How many benchmarks does dots3-note Preview cover on BenchLM?

dots3-note Preview currently has 31 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Step 5 Preview cover on BenchLM?

Step 5 Preview currently has 22 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [dots3-note Preview vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-dots3-note-preview)
- [Step 5 Preview vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-step-5-preview)
- [dots3-note Preview vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Step 5 Preview vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-step-5-preview)

## Explore More

- [dots3-note Preview profile](/models/dots3-note-preview)
- [Step 5 Preview profile](/models/step-5-preview)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)