Step 5 Preview Tops OpenRouter Trending, Open Source on Oct 15
10/08/2026 — 10/11, 00:17·3 sources (all)·8 reports (all)
Key takeaways
- StepFun's flagship foundation model Step 5 Preview has climbed to the top of OpenRouter's Trending list and ranks second on the daily chart,…
Background & analysis
On October 8, 2026, StepFun announced via its official X account @StepFun_ai that Step 5 Preview had gone live on OpenRouter, with a week of free access rolling out across opencode, cline, NousResearch, kilocode, and other platforms. The company described the model as offering flagship-tier intelligence for agentic and professional work at substantially lower task cost. The same day, StepFun shared a model overview, benchmarks, and demos, along with links to technical specs and API documentation, though the posts themselves did not list specific parameters or benchmark scores.
Later that evening, StepFun said Step 5 Preview would be free in opencode for one week, noting that users could keep their existing workflow and simply switch models. At 23:45 that night, the company announced the model would be free for one week through Nous Research's Nous Portal, where users could try it with Hermes Agent and share what they build. StepFun framed this as a limited-time free trial ahead of the model's official release.
In the early hours of October 9, StepFun announced that Step 5 Preview would be free for one week in the coding tool Cline, again positioning it as a flagship model for agentic and professional work and inviting developers to try it and show off their results. On October 10, the company said Step 5 Preview was reaching more developers through Nous Portal, free to explore for the week. Beyond the free window and the channel changes, StepFun has not provided further details on parameters or capabilities. The model remains in preview, with the limited-time free access spanning OpenRouter, opencode, Cline, and Nous Portal.
AI-generated from 6 reports · updated 19 hours ago
Latest turnStep 5 Preview, the flagship foundation model from StepFun, has topped OpenRouter's Trending list and ranks second globally on its daily chart, with an official open source release slated for October 15. AI researcher Elvis Saravia said after testing it that the model is comparable to GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3 while offering competitive pricing.
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Step 5 Preview, the flagship foundation model from StepFun, has topped OpenRouter's Trending list and ranks second globally on its daily chart, with an official open source release slated for October 15. AI researcher Elvis Saravia said after testing it that the model is comparable to GLM-5.3 and Kimi K3 while offering competitive pricing.
雷峰网AI score 52StepFun says Step 5 Preview is now within reach of more builders through Nous Portal and is free to explore for the week. Beyond that free window and availability change, the company shared no further details on parameters or capabilities.
X：阶跃星辰 (@StepFun_ai)First-partyAI score 50Nous Research announced that StepFun's Step 5 Preview is free on Nous Portal for the next week. The model is a 600B-total, 27B-active MoE with 1M context and vision, and scored 33.89 on the Hermes Index, the same score as GPT-6 Luna.
X：Nous Research (@NousResearch)AI score 57
StepFun announced on its official X account that Step 5 Preview, its flagship model for agentic and professional work, is free in Cline for one week. The company is inviting developers to put the model into their own builds and show off the results.
X：阶跃星辰 (@StepFun_ai)First-partyAI score 48
StepFun says its flagship model for agentic and professional work, Step 5 Preview, is free for one week through Nous Research's Nous Portal. Users can try it alongside the Hermes Agent and share what they build, giving them a limited window to test the model before its official release.
X：阶跃星辰 (@StepFun_ai)First-partyAI score 55StepFun says its flagship model, Step 5 Preview, will be free to use inside opencode for one week. It positions the model for agentic and professional work, telling users they can keep their existing workflow and simply switch models.
X：阶跃星辰 (@StepFun_ai)First-partyAI score 43StepFun has published an overview of Step 5 Preview covering benchmarks, demos, technical specs and API documentation through its official X account. The posts point developers to the documentation but do not list specific model parameters or benchmark scores.
X：阶跃星辰 (@StepFun_ai)First-partyAI score 45StepFun says Step 5 Preview is now live on OpenRouter, with a week of free access rolling out across opencode, cline, NousResearch, kilocode and other platforms. The company describes it as flagship-tier intelligence for agentic and professional work at substantially lower task cost.
X：阶跃星辰 (@StepFun_ai)First-partyAI score 56
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