DeepSeek-V3.1 vs Step-3.5-Flash

DeepSeek-V3.1

DeepSeek

DeepSeek-V3.1, released by DeepSeek in August 2025, is a hybrid large language model with 671 billion total parameters (37 billion active) that unifies the capabilities of DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1 in a single model. It features a 128K token context window and supports both direct generation and extended reasoning modes selectable via the chat template. DeepSeek-V3.1 targets general-purpose tasks, coding, and complex reasoning under an open MIT license.

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.