# O3 Mini vs Step 5 Preview

As of Oct 15, 2026, O3 Mini leads Step 5 Preview in 1 of 3 shared categories: General LLM.

O3 Mini: $1.9250000000000003 per 1M blended tokens.

Step 5 Preview: $1.4249999999999998 per 1M blended tokens.

O3 Mini: closed weights.

Step 5 Preview: closed weights.

- Which to pick, General LLM: As of Oct 15, 2026, O3 Mini leads Step 5 Preview in General LLM at #10 against #77.
- Which to pick, Reasoning: As of Oct 15, 2026, Step 5 Preview leads O3 Mini in Reasoning at #63 against #172.
- Which to pick, Long context: As of Oct 15, 2026, Step 5 Preview leads O3 Mini in Long context at #68 against #186.

As of Oct 15, 2026, O3 Mini is a former state-of-the-art holder in Reasoning (since Feb 9, 2025; sources LMArena Text (style-controlled, hard prompts); methodology v1.0).

As of Oct 15, 2026, Step 5 Preview is ranked #33 in Coding › Web dev (since Oct 15, 2026; sources LMArena WebDev; methodology v1.0).
