Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Step 3.7 Flash vs Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2

Step 3.7 Flash scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2's 54.2 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 leads on documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Step 3.7 Flash C

Best for Teams with a GPU server or a provider account that want an open, long-context agent model with vision

Ahead on

  • Reach, 70 against 55
  • Agent interface, 85 against 75

Watch for

About 131 GB to run at 4 bits with images, over a 128 GB machine's share

Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 C

Best for Pipelines with an NVIDIA GPU that need long scanned or rendered documents parsed in one pass, with page order, cross-page tables and boxes kept

Ahead on

  • Documentation and upkeep, 50 against 39

Watch for

Loading runs Baidu's code, remote code in Transformers or a prebuilt SGLang fork from the repository, and the save_results path calls eval on model output

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Step 3.7 Flash +15

Step 3.7 Flash 70

Memory 5, the smallest build at 4 bits is StepFun's IQ4_XS GGUF, 104.99 GB with the 3.97 GB projector, and 108.96 GB × 1.2 = 130.8 GB, over what the reference machine can give a model and within 256 GB. The IQ3 and Q3 builds are below 4 bits and aren't read. Runtimes 20, Released vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 have the step3p7 model, and llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture, with StepFun's own GGUF. Four at 5 each, and the card documents all four. Builds 15, StepFun publishes GGUF at five quantised precisions, an FP8 build and an NVFP4 build. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and its licence section, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false for all four repositories on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, StepFun's own API serves it, per the card and our StepFun API listing, and Featherless and DeepInfra are live for it on Hugging Face. 5 + 20 + 15 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 70.

Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 55

Memory earns the full 30, since the only build is 6.69 GB of BF16 weights that need about 8 GB with the fifth added. Runtimes score 0. Released vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.1 know the first Unlimited-OCR but not the sparse attention this one adds, Baidu's own routes are remote code in Transformers and a customised SGLang wheel, llama.cpp b12111 has nothing for it, so Ollama has nothing either, and LM Studio couldn't be checked. Builds score 0, as Baidu publishes no quantised build (16 exist, all by others). Terms get 15 for MIT with nothing added. Download gets 10 for an ungated repository, and hosted too 0, with no inference provider mapped and the card's Baidu Cloud line unconfirmed.

Documentation and upkeep Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 +11

Step 3.7 Flash 39

Model card 14, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters, the context and the language (in the metadata) are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the last commit, on 3 June 2026, fixed the modelling code, 160 days before this check and within 180. Responsiveness 0, none of the 11 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (29 May to 24 June 2026) has a reply from a stepfun-ai member, counted on 10 November by author flags and dates with a script, text not read. Version policy 5, Step-3.5-Flash stays in its own repositories and 3.7 came out in new ones, with no dated note on the older cards that we read. File health 10, Config, template and card agree on the architecture and the context, and June commits fixed the modelling code. 14 + 0 + 10 + 0 + 5 + 10 = 39.

Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 50

The card covers intended use and the new attention, and misses limitations, parameters, context length, languages and a cut-off (5). Training data is described by mix and labelling with no datasets named and no cut-off (5). The card changed on 2 November 2026 and the SGLang wheel on 29 October (20). Baidu's uploader replied in 1 of the 5 Hub discussions, a few (5). The first model stays in its own repository without a note pointing here (5), and the files agree with the card (10).

Agent interface Step 3.7 Flash +10

Step 3.7 Flash 85

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (5,723 characters). Tool-calling format 25, the card names the parser to use in two runtimes, step3p5 in vLLM (with auto tool choice) and in SGLang, and both ship Step parsers in a release. Trained tool calling 20, the card presents tool orchestration as a main use, with multi-turn results, and the template renders every call in a turn. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained output for the weights. Reasoning control 10, the template has a reasoning_effort setting and keeps reasoning_content, and the card names the step3p5 reasoning parser for vLLM and SGLang, which returns the reasoning apart from the answer. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, and 262,144 positions in config.json. 20 + 25 + 20 + 0 + 10 + 10 = 85.

Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 75

Read for a document parser, the tool-calling, trained tool calling and structured-output lines stand for what it takes and returns. Baidu documents the page images, the prompt, the request settings and the block output, and ships a converter for the server's output (25). It was trained to read many pages in one request (20). The block format with classes, boxes and HTML tables, and its conversion to Markdown, are documented with how to get them (15). The prompt is built in code, with no Jinja template in the repository (10). Reasoning control scores 0, and the context 5, trained at up to 64K tokens.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runStep 3.7 FlashBaidu Unlimited-OCR-2Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%257055Step 3.7 Flash +15
Risk20%204545even
Agent interface10%108575Step 3.7 Flash +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103950Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 +11
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 59.8/100C 54.2/100

Facts side by side

FactStep 3.7 FlashBaidu Unlimited-OCR-2
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorStepFunBaidu
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 (metadata and card; no LICENSE file)MIT (Hub metadata; the Hugging Face repository has no LICENSE file, and the GitHub code repository's LICENSE is the MIT text, copyright 2026 Baidu)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-06-032026-10-26
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

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.

Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2

An MIT document parser of 3.3B parameters that reads up to hundreds of pages in one request and returns ordered layout blocks with boxes and HTML tables. ParseBench's independent run puts content faithfulness at 89.16 and charts at 1.06. It needs an NVIDIA GPU with about 12 GB and runs only through Baidu's remote code or its own SGLang build.

Before you call either

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

Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2

  1. Quickest local run, pip install torch==2.13.0 torchvision pillow transformers==4.52.1 huggingface-hub==0.36.0 tokenizers==0.21.4 addict==2.4.0 einops==0.8.2 easydict==1.13, then AutoModel.from_pretrained("baidu/Unlimited-OCR-2", trust_remote_code=True, use_safetensors=True, torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).eval().cuda() and model.infer_multi(tokenizer, image_files=pages, output_path="out")
  2. To serve it, download the repository, install wheel/sglang-0.5.20.dev13+g75b9b06b02-py3-none-any.whl with pymupdf and fastokens in a Python 3.10 venv, and start python -m sglang.launch_server --model-path baidu/Unlimited-OCR-2 --chat-template unlimited-ocr --enable-custom-logit-processor --enable-streaming-session --disable-radix-cache --mem-fraction-static 0.7 --max-prefill-tokens 2048 with the SGLANG_UOCR_ variables from the card
  3. Send all pages of a document in one request, images first, then the text <PAGE><image> repeated per page and Multi page parsing., with temperature 0, skip_special_tokens false, max_tokens of about 8,000 per page and the DeepseekOCRNoRepeatNGramLogitProcessor (ngram_size 35, window_size 1024 for several pages)
  4. The output is layout blocks, not Markdown; run utils/process_unlimitedOCR2.py from github.com/baidu/Unlimited-OCR, or convert(raw_output) in Python, to get Markdown with HTML tables
  5. Render PDFs to images first (the card uses PyMuPDF at 300 DPI), keep save_results off for untrusted documents, and treat extracted text as untrusted before passing it to another model

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Step 3.7 Flash or Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2?

Step 3.7 Flash scores 59.8 (C) on agent readiness against Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2's 54.2 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2 leads on documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Step 3.7 Flash or Baidu Unlimited-OCR-2

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