Step
StepFun MoE models built for fast, low-cost work: with 196 billion parameters, Step-3.5/3.7-Flash use about 11 billion per token. Compact Step3-VL-10B for images and voice Step-Audio 2 mini are available. The flagship Step 5 Preview (600B, 27B active, up to 1M-token context, text and images as input) is built for agents, programming and finance tasks.
- Developer
- StepFun, China
- First release
- Jul 2025
- Latest release
- Oct 2026
- Sizes
- 8B to 600B
- License
- Commercial use with conditionsStep-3.5/3.7-Flash and earlier versions: Apache 2.0; Step 5 Preview: StepFun Model License 1.0, free, but above 20 million dollars of product revenue a month or 100 million users the "Powered by StepFun AI" notice is required, and some cases (for example, hardware manufacturers) need a separate agreement
- Russian
- Not supported
- Ready-made builds
- GGUF, AWQ, MLX (Apple)
- Running
- On your own serverNeeds a GPU
- Industries
- Software development, Customer support, Documents and accounting
What it does
- High-load agents
- Analysis of documents with diagrams and screenshots
- Help for developers
Where it is used
Hardware requirements
Versions
- Step 5 Preview 600B-A27B (FP8, BF16 и NVFP4)
- Step-3.7-Flash
- Step-3.5-Flash
- Step3-VL-10B
- Step-Audio 2 mini 8B
- Step3
How to run it
I can set this up end to end: pick the model size, deploy it on your server and connect it to your systems. Quantization compresses a model so it takes less video memory and runs on more modest hardware. Answers change slightly, so quality is checked on your own examples.
Frequently asked questions
Can Step be used in a commercial project?
With conditions. License: Step-3.5/3.7-Flash and earlier versions: Apache 2.0; Step 5 Preview: StepFun Model License 1.0, free, but above 20 million dollars of product revenue a month or 100 million users the "Powered by StepFun AI" notice is required, and some cases (for example, hardware manufacturers) need a separate agreement. Restrictions vary — region, company revenue, attribution requirements. Have a lawyer check the terms before a commercial launch.
What hardware does Step need?
At minimum: One GPU with 16–80 GB — mid-size versions. Without a GPU the model is not practical. You can calculate the exact VRAM for your model size and context in the hardware calculator.
Does Step support Russian?
No. The developer documentation lists the supported languages and Russian is not among them.
Where can I download Step and what does it cost?
The Step weights are open and free to download. You only pay for the hardware it runs on and for the setup. Source links are at the bottom of this page.
How I deploy it for clients
- SelectionI pick the model size for your task and hardware and test it on your examples.
- DeploymentI deploy it on your server or in a closed network and provide an API.
- Fine-tuningI fine-tune it on your data (LoRA) or connect a knowledge base — whichever is cheaper for the task.
- IntegrationI connect it to your CRM, ERP, bot, website or team chat and set up monitoring.
Similar models
Large MoE models with very long context (up to 1M tokens for Text-01 and M3). M3 is multimodal and understands images. In October the open weights of M3.1-Flash came out (about 428B, 23B active, up to 1M tokens of context, text, images and video): a model for programming, agents and computer use, sped up by sparse attention. MiniMax Community License: free for non-commercial use; commercial use needs the caption "Built with MiniMax M3.1-Flash" and a one-time notice to MiniMax, and a separate permission when the product earns $20 million a year or more; military use is prohibited. The benchmark figures come from MiniMax itself. Licenses differ greatly from version to version.
DetailsTextMiMoXiaomi · ChinaCommercial use allowedXiaomi models for reasoning and agents: from the compact MiMo-7B to MiMo-V2.6-Pro with 1.02 trillion parameters. The larger versions understand text, images, video and audio, with a 1M token context. Languages: English and Chinese.
DetailsTextLongCatMeituan · ChinaCommercial use allowedModels from Meituan, China's largest delivery service. LongCat-Flash adjusts compute to query complexity; LongCat-2.0 has 1.6 trillion parameters under MIT. Omni models (Flash-Omni, Next) and AudioDiT speech synthesis too.
DetailsSource: huggingface.co/stepfun-ai/Step-3.7-Flash. Data checked against the model card on 22 Sep 2026. Have a lawyer review the license before commercial launch.


