MiMo-V2.6-Flash vs Step 5 Preview: price, speed and benchmarks

If you only looked at the intelligence index, MiMo-V2.6-Flash and Step 5 Preview would be hard to tell apart. The figures come from tracked catalogue data, not from our own testing, so treat them as a starting point for a trial on your tasks. Price separates them more than anything else; on a blended basis Step 5 Preview costs 8.1 times as much as MiMo-V2.6-Flash.

What they cost

MiMo-V2.6-Flash lists $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens; Step 5 Preview lists $1.00 and $2.70. That makes MiMo-V2.6-Flash's output 90% cheaper.

Take 1 million input tokens and 200,000 output tokens: that comes to $0.20 on MiMo-V2.6-Flash and $1.54 on Step 5 Preview. For extracting fields from 20,000 pages of 1,500 tokens into 150-token records, MiMo-V2.6-Flash would come in 87% lower: $5.04 for MiMo-V2.6-Flash against $38.10 for Step 5 Preview.

Waiting time

Once a response is under way, MiMo-V2.6-Flash produces roughly 36 tokens per second against 151 tokens per second for Step 5 Preview. That makes Step 5 Preview roughly 4.2 times as fast at writing. Before any text appears, MiMo-V2.6-Flash takes 3.5 seconds and Step 5 Preview 0.91 seconds. In an interactive app, Step 5 Preview will feel noticeably more responsive.

Add the two numbers up for an 800-token reply and Step 5 Preview finishes first: 26 seconds for MiMo-V2.6-Flash, 6.2 seconds for Step 5 Preview.

Benchmark scores

On the intelligence index, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 26.7 against 28.5 for Step 5 Preview. It is a small margin for an index that averages many evaluations.

Across the 109 active models with an intelligence score in the catalogue, MiMo-V2.6-Flash ranks 64th and Step 5 Preview ranks 61st.

Specialist coding and math indexes are missing for both, so treat the overall score as the only capability signal here.

Value for money

Dividing the blended price by the intelligence index gives a rough cost per point: $0.0066 for MiMo-V2.6-Flash and $0.050 for Step 5 Preview, per million tokens. MiMo-V2.6-Flash delivers each index point for 87% less; whether Step 5 Preview's extra 1.8 points are worth the premium depends on how often your tasks need them.

Generation gap

MiMo-V2.6-Flash arrived on September 21, 2026, 3 days after Step 5 Preview (September 18, 2026). That is close enough to count them as the same generation.