About StepFun
The StepFun token price index is $0.223 per 1M tokens today, down 0.8% since yesterday, down 4.9% over the past week and up 216.6% over the past month. Since Mar 15, 2026 it has ranged from $0.0324 to $0.234. It is the usage-weighted average of the posted prices of StepFun's 2 models at the mix of tokens agents send (87% cache read, 12% input, 1% output); Step 5 Preview has the largest share of usage, at 93.1%. It is calculated once a day, for each UTC day, shortly after the day ends.
StepFun, a Shanghai-based maker of the Step models, was founded in April 2023 by former Microsoft employees Jiang Daxin, Zhu Yibo and Jiao Binxing; Jiang is chief executive, and Yin Qi, a co-founder and former chief executive of Megvii, is chairman. Of the three models the index counts, each newer one costs more: on October 28, 2026, from Step 3.5 Flash at $0.10/$0.30 per million input and output tokens to Step 5 Preview at $1.00/$2.70. Step 5 Preview was the second most-used model by tokens in OpenRouter's daily rankings every day from October 9 to 14, 2026, behind DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.
Models and prices
| Model | Input | Cache read | Output | At the mix |
|---|
| Step 5 Preview | $1.00 | $0.10 | $2.70 | $0.234 |
| Step 3.7 Flash | $0.20 | $0.04 | $1.15 | $0.0703 |
| Step 3.5 Flash | $0.10 | $0.02 | $0.30 | $0.0324 |
USD per 1M tokens, from StepFun's international price list, on October 28, 2026; "At the mix" prices 87% of tokens as cache reads, 12% as input and 1% as output, as the index does. Cache hits cost 10% of the input price on Step 5 Preview and 20% on the two Flash models. Caching is automatic for prompts over 256 tokens, and cache writes are billed at the ordinary input price. On Step 5 Preview and Step 3.7 Flash, output tokens include the model's reasoning. StepFun also runs a separate platform for China.
What this index measures
Each day's value averages the prices StepFun posts for its own Step models, weighted by each model's tokens in OpenRouter's daily rankings, with each model priced at the mix of tokens agents send: 87% cache reads, 12% input and 1% output, as OpenRouter measured in agentic use. On October 27, 2026, Step 5 Preview carried 91.9% of StepFun's ranked tokens and Step 3.7 Flash 8.1%.
The history starts on March 15, 2026, the first day a paid StepFun model was among OpenRouter's 50 most-used. From February 2 to March 14 only Step 3.5 Flash's free variant was, and free models are not counted. On 41 days from then to October 27, 2026, no paid StepFun model was among the 50, so the value was carried: the last day's model shares, priced at each day's own prices. The longest run was the 30 days from September 8 to October 7, 2026, at Step 3.7 Flash's price; Step 5 Preview, announced on September 20, reached OpenRouter on October 8. The Flash models are priced at the October 28, 2026 list throughout, as the index's dated price history has no change for them.
Other hosts sell the same weights: on October 28, 2026, DeepInfra and Featherless listed Step 5 Preview on OpenRouter at StepFun's $1.00/$2.70, with cache reads at $0.10, and NovitaAI listed Step 3.7 Flash at StepFun's $0.20/$1.15. Both Flash models are under the Apache 2.0 license; Step 5 Preview uses the StepFun Model License 1.0, which its model card calls "Apache-2.0-Style", with added attribution and commercial-license conditions. The index uses StepFun's own price.
What moves StepFun's index
- Newer, pricier models. At the mix, on October 28, 2026 prices, Step 3.7 Flash costs about 2.2 times as much as Step 3.5 Flash, and Step 5 Preview about 3.3 times as much as Step 3.7 Flash. On May 30, 2026, the first day Step 3.7 Flash was among OpenRouter's 50 most-used, the index rose to $0.0703 from $0.0324; on October 8, Step 5 Preview's first day there, it rose to $0.191. Each time, the new model carried all of StepFun's ranked tokens.
- The cache price. Cache reads are 87% of the mix and, at Step 5 Preview's price since October 14, 2026, 37% of its price at the mix, so the cache-hit price moves the index even when input and output prices stay the same. On October 14, 2026, StepFun doubled Step 5 Preview's pay-as-you-go cache-hit price in China for users who had not called it before; the index applies the same change to the dollar price, $0.05 to $0.10, so its price at the mix rose 23%, to $0.234 from $0.191, and the index with it.
- Flash's share. From October 25 to 27, 2026, Step 3.7 Flash was back among OpenRouter's 50 most-used, with 5.2% to 8.1% of StepFun's ranked tokens, and the index eased to $0.221 on October 27.
Price history
- February 2026: Step 3.5 Flash released with open weights; $0.10/$0.30 on the October 28, 2026 list, with cache hits at $0.02.
- May 29, 2026: Step 3.7 Flash released with open weights; $0.20/$1.15 on the October 28, 2026 list, with cache hits at $0.04, as on its model card.
- September 20, 2026: StepFun announced Step 5 Preview, with 600 billion parameters, 27 billion of them active per token, and a 1M-token context window.
- October 8, 2026: Step 5 Preview listed on OpenRouter; $1.00/$2.70 on the October 28, 2026 list.
- October 14, 2026: Step 5 Preview's pay-as-you-go cache-hit price in China doubled from 00:30 Beijing time, to 0.70 yuan per million tokens from 0.35, with cache-miss input (7 yuan) and output (20 yuan) unchanged; users who had called it before then were not affected, Beijing Business Today reported via Sina Finance. In dollars it is $0.10 on the October 28, 2026 list; the index takes it as $0.05 before, the same 5% of input.
- October 15, 2026: Step 5 Preview's weights published on Hugging Face and ModelScope.
FAQ
How much does the StepFun API cost per million tokens? On October 28, 2026, Step 5 Preview cost $1.00 input, $0.10 for cache hits and $2.70 output, and Step 3.7 Flash $0.20, $0.04 and $1.15, as in the table above.
Why did StepFun's index rise in October 2026? Step 5 Preview, the priciest of the three StepFun models the index counts, was the only StepFun model in the index from October 8 to 24, and on October 14 StepFun doubled its cache-hit price in China, a change the index applies to the dollar price ($0.05 to $0.10).
How often is it updated? Once a day: each UTC day's value is calculated in the first update after that day ends, from the day's OpenRouter volumes and the prices posted then. Updates are scheduled every 2 hours but can start hours late.
Sources
Text reviewed Oct 28, 2026; the figures in it are as of that date. The figures at the top of this page update once a day.
Cite as: Compute Screener, “StepFun (Step) token price index”, computescreener.com/tokens/stepfun. The figures are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit to Compute Screener.
