StepFun 阶跃AI (formerly Yuewen 跃问)
StepFun's free AI assistant and agent app, renamed from Yuewen
Overview
阶跃AI, formerly Yuewen (跃问), is StepFun's (阶跃星辰) free consumer AI assistant — chat, documents, images, voice and the StepClaw desktop agent — running on its Step 3.7 Flash model, alongside open-weight Step models and a Step Plan selling coding-agent credits from $6.99 a month.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 1 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- Flagship model with smart routing
- For coding agents such as Cursor and Cline
- Sold in daily-limited quotas
- Priority API access and support
- Priority API access and support
- Priority API access and support
- Studio creation credits worth 40% of the plan
What you can produce with StepFun 阶跃AI (formerly Yuewen 跃问)
- 阶跃AI multimodal assistant: chat, documents, images and voice
- StepClaw desktop agent
- Step 3.7 Flash model, with Step 5 Preview due as open weights
- Step Plan developer subscription for coding agents
- Step-Video-T2V open text-to-video model (MIT licence)
- Step-Audio speech models and Step1X-Edit image editing
StepFun built its name on multimodal models rather than chat alone — Step-Video-T2V, the Step-Audio family and Step1X-Edit are credible open releases, and Step 5 Preview, a 600-billion-parameter model, is due as open weights in October. Its consumer app, renamed from Yuewen to 阶跃AI, is free, runs on Step 3.7 Flash and now leans into agents with a desktop tool called StepClaw; heavier use is sold through an in-app credit membership. For developers, the Step Plan prices coding-agent credits from $6.99 to $99 a month, though every tier was sold out when we checked. Funding is deep — more than ¥5 billion in January 2026 — and a Hong Kong listing has been reported but not confirmed. Brand recognition outside China is low and the app is Chinese-first, so it suits Chinese-speaking users and developers who want an alternative to the bigger labs' tools.
What we found
StepFun (阶跃星辰) is a Shanghai model lab founded in April 2023 by Jiang Daxin, Zhu Yibo and Jiao Binxing, all formerly of Microsoft. Its consumer assistant, launched as Yuewen (跃问), is now called 阶跃AI: the old yuewen.cn address has lapsed, and the app lives at chat.stepfun.com and in the app stores, free on web, iPhone and Android. It handles chat, documents, images and voice, runs on StepFun's own Step 3.7 Flash model, and has become agent-first, with a desktop agent called StepClaw. Apple's Chinese App Store rates it 4.7 out of 5 from 915 ratings. New users get a seven-day full trial of the agent features; regular use beyond the free tier is sold as a monthly credit membership whose prices are shown only in the app.
StepFun's reputation rests on its models, many released openly. Step 3.7 Flash is a 198-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with about 11 billion active; Step 5 Preview, announced as 600 billion parameters with 27 billion active and a million-token context, is due to be released openly on 15 October. Its video, audio and image-editing models — Step-Video-T2V under the MIT licence, the Step-Audio family and Step1X-Edit — are credible releases, though the claims that its small vision model rivals models ten to twenty times larger, and that Step1X-Edit matches GPT-4o, are StepFun's own.
For developers, the Step Plan sells monthly credits for coding agents: Mini at $6.99, Plus at $9.99, Pro at $29 and Max at $99, or ¥49 to ¥699 in China. Every tier showed as sold out when we checked, with free trials closed and plans released in daily quotas.
Money is not the constraint. StepFun closed a Series B+ of more than ¥5 billion in January 2026, reported at the time as the largest single Chinese model round in the previous 12 months, with Megvii co-founder Yin Qi becoming chairman, and it has since restructured as a joint-stock company. Press reports in June said it had filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing; StepFun has published no prospectus.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including StepFun 阶跃AI (formerly Yuewen 跃问)'s official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with StepFun 阶跃AI (formerly Yuewen 跃问) unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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