The Cost of Context: StepFun’s Cache-First Economics

What happened: StepFun's Step 5 Preview listing prices cache reads at $0.05 per million tokens, one-twentieth of its standard input price, while publishing no cache-write rate. Key numbers: Input $1.00/M tokens, output $2.70/M tokens, cache read $0.05/M. Why it matters: The 20x cache-read discount is common, but StepFun's floor sits four times below Anthropic and Meta listings. The blank write side leaves deployers carrying an unpublished term into cost forecasts for memory-intensive agent workloads. Market: -3.3% by next close ($737.54 on Oct 14), +13.6% YTD

StepFun's Step 5 Preview listing prices cache reads at $0.05 per million tokens, one-twentieth of its standard input price, while publishing no cache-write rate.

The 20x cache-read discount is common, but StepFun's floor sits four times below Anthropic and Meta listings. The blank write side leaves deployers carrying an unpublished term into cost forecasts for memory-intensive agent workloads. Market: -3.3% by next close ($737.54 on Oct 14), +13.6% YTD