Comprehensive side-by-side LLM comparison
Both models show comparable benchmark performance. Claude Opus 4.1 supports multimodal inputs. Claude Opus 4.1 is available on 3 providers. Both models have their strengths depending on your specific coding needs.
Anthropic
Claude Opus 4.1, released by Anthropic in August 2025, is a large language model from the Claude 4 family optimized for demanding reasoning, multi-step coding, and extended analysis tasks. It features a 200K token context window, 32K maximum output tokens, native image understanding, and extended thinking capabilities. Opus 4.1 targets complex problem-solving, multi-turn reasoning workflows, and applications requiring deep analysis with integrated tool use.
StepFun
Step-3.5-Flash, released by StepFun on February 2, 2026, is a Mixture-of-Experts large language model with 197 billion total parameters and approximately 11 billion active parameters per inference. It features a 256K token context window using a 3:1 sliding-window-to-full-attention ratio, processing 100–350 tokens per second. Step-3.5-Flash targets agentic tasks, coding workflows, and open-source deployments requiring frontier reasoning capabilities with efficient inference, under an Apache 2.0 license.
6 months newer

Claude Opus 4.1
Anthropic
2025-08-05
Step-3.5-Flash
StepFun
2026-02-02
Context window and performance specifications
Average performance across 1 common benchmarks
Claude Opus 4.1
Step-3.5-Flash
Performance comparison across key benchmark categories
Claude Opus 4.1
Step-3.5-Flash
Claude Opus 4.1
2025-01
Available providers and their performance metrics
Claude Opus 4.1
Anthropic
AWS Bedrock
Google Cloud Vertex AI
Step-3.5-Flash
Claude Opus 4.1
Step-3.5-Flash
Claude Opus 4.1
Step-3.5-Flash