Step 5 Preview vs Claude Fable 5.1
Step 5 Preview took 10 min 44 s and $0.33 at list price, Claude Fable 5.1 took 16 min 4 s and $3.97 at list price. Claude Fable 5.1 took 1.5× as long and cost 12× as much.
Step 5 Preview
StepFun · $2.70/M out · 155 HN pts
Claude Fable 5.1
Anthropic · $50.00/M out · 1,630 HN pts
Only Claude Fable 5.1 has CLI runs here (Claude Code).
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a three-person workshop based in Rotterdam, dedicated to keeping vintage synthesizers alive and playable. We are technicians, musicians, and obsessive tinkerers who believe that classic analog instruments deserve better than silence. From temperamental Jupiter-8s to worn-out ARP Odysseys, we restore, repair, and maintain the machines that shaped the sound of modern music. Every repair starts with listening—both to the instrument and to the person who plays it. Whether you are chasing a rare fault, need a full calibration, or simply want your old synth to feel new again, our bench is open. We understand that no two synthesizers arrive with the same story, and we treat each circuit, slider, and key with the care its history deserves. At Patchbay, we are here to make sure the sounds of tomorrow are built on those that came before.
Patchbay is three people and one workshop in Rotterdam, and we spend our days bringing old synthesizers back to life. Most of what arrives at our bench is somewhere between thirty and fifty years old: a Juno with a dead voice chip, a Minimoog that drifts out of tune the moment the room warms up, a Polysix whose battery has quietly eaten its own circuit board. We know these instruments inside and out because we have had hundreds of them open on the table.
We started Patchbay because we kept meeting musicians who had been told their synth was not worth fixing. We disagree. These machines were built to be serviced, and with the right parts, enough patience, and a good set of schematics, almost any of them can be made to play again. When we hand an instrument back, we want it to sound the way it did the day it left the factory, or better.
Specs and numbers
| Step 5 Preview | Claude Fable 5.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | StepFun | Anthropic |
| Made in | China | US |
| Released | 8 Oct 2026 | 1 Sep 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $1.00 | $10.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $2.70 | $50.00 |
| Context | 1,048,576 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Weights | open | closed |
| Hacker News points | 155 | 1,630 |
| Time for the six prompts | 10 min 44 s | 16 min 4 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.33 | $3.97 |
Step 5 Preview was cheaper: $3.64 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Step 5 Preview was faster: 5 min 21 s less in total, and faster on 4 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Step 5 Preview's Breakout game plays; Claude Fable 5.1's stopped painting.
Rebuild this screen experiment: Claude Fable 5.1's rebuild matched the screenshot at 78%; Step 5 Preview was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Claude Fable 5.1's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Step 5 Preview was not in it.





