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.
- Developer
- StepFun, China
- First release
- Jul 2025
- Latest release
- May 2026
- Sizes
- 8B – 321B
- License
- Commercial use allowedApache 2.0
- 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-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?
Yes. License: Apache 2.0. It allows commercial use, but it is still worth having a lawyer review the license before 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 model card lists its 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. 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.


