Laguna M.1 vs Step 3.7 Flash

Laguna M.1

• +1.2 on 4 November 2026: correction

Step 3.7 Flash

No score change since it was listed.

Laguna M.1

A large open-weight coding and agent model under plain Apache 2.0, for teams with a multi-GPU server. Its smallest build needs about 167 GB, more than a 128 GB machine. Released llama.cpp, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang and Transformers code runs the architecture. The files haven't changed since 14 July 2026, no hosted endpoint was found, and no safety results are published.

Step 3.7 Flash

A capable open agent model with a clean licence, every kind of build and four released runtimes. Two things hold it back: it's a little too big for a 128 GB machine at 4 bits, whatever the card says, and StepFun has gone quiet on the repository since June. No safety results, limitations or data description.

Laguna M.1

1. Run the NVFP4 build on Blackwell GPUs with vllm serve poolside/Laguna-M.1-NVFP4 --tensor-parallel-size 2 --tool-call-parser poolside_v1 --reasoning-parser poolside_v1 --enable-auto-tool-choice, on vLLM 0.21.0 or later
2. Thinking is off in the template unless you pass enable_thinking true or start the server with --default-chat-template-kwargs '{"enable_thinking": true}', which Poolside recommends for agentic coding
3. Pass earlier reasoning back as reasoning_content in the history, since the card says reasoning may stop in later steps if it's dropped
4. Sampling per the card is temperature 1.0 and top_k 20
5. The FP8 build's Docker image and serve.sh predate upstream support and set a 4,096-token context, so prefer a released vLLM
6. It doesn't fit our 128 GB reference machine at any published precision
7. Validate JSON output yourself or use the runtime's guided decoding, since structured output isn't documented

Step 3.7 Flash

1. On a 128 GB machine the 4-bit GGUF won't fit with a working context. Use StepFun's API or a provider, or a server
2. On vLLM or SGLang pass --tool-call-parser step3p5 --reasoning-parser step3p5
3. The card's commands pass trust-remote-code. Released Transformers 5.22.2 has the model built in if you'd rather not run the repository's code
4. For llama.cpp load the mmproj file from StepFun's GGUF repository for image input
5. StepFun's API has two hosts. Use the one where your key was issued, api.stepfun.ai or api.stepfun.com
6. The same model is on our StepFun API listing, with prices and terms