Step Audio 2vsStep 3
Step Audio 2 leads the overall Podium Score by 22.0 points (89.0 vs 67.0).Category wins: Step Audio 2 0 — 0 Step 3.Step Audio 2 is the cheaper pick ($0.024/M vs $3/M per 1M output tokens). Step Audio 2 is faster (150 t/s vs 50 t/s).
Step Audio 2Drag slider or hover to compareStep 3
Quick VerdictAggregated 2026 Benchmark Analysis
Step Audio 2 is rated higher overall with a Podium Score of 89.0 (vs 67.0 for Step 3). Both models show closely matched capabilities across domain benchmarks.
Coding & Engineering
Comparable
Inference Speed
Step Audio 2 (150 t/s)
Cost Efficiency
Step Audio 2 ($0.024/M)
API Price / 1M (in · out)
Step Audio 2 $0.012/M · $0.024/M — Step 3 $1/M · $3/M
Choose Step Audio 2 for cost-sensitive workloads, and Step 3 for general-purpose workloads.
| Metric | Step Audio 2 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Podium Score | 89.0 ▲ | 67.0 |
| Arena Elo | 1422 | — |
| Intelligence Index | 89.0 | — |
| Coding | 0.0 | — |
| Math | 0.0 | — |
| Reasoning | 32.0 | — |
| Agentic | 55.0 | — |
| Knowledge | 46.0 | — |
| Multimodal | 85.0 | — |
| Long-context | 45.0 | — |
| Output speed | 150 t/s ▲ | 50 t/s |
| Output price | $0.024/M ▲ | $3/M |
| Context window | 64K | 128K ▲ |
Scores aggregated from five independent leaderboards. See Methodology. More head-to-heads: Step Audio 2 vs Claude Mythos · Step Audio 2 vs Claude 5.5 Sonnet · Step Audio 2 vs Kimi K3.1 Pro · Step Audio 2 vs Eleven Multilingual v3