Adobe Firefly vs StepFun Step 3.5 Flash
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Adobe Firefly
Adobe's AI image generator -- commercially safe and baked into Creative Cloud
StepFun Step 3.5 Flash
StepFun's (China) agent-focused open-weight model -- Step 3.5 Flash launched 2026-02-01. 196B sparse MoE, ~11B active. Benchmarks slightly ahead of DeepSeek V3.2 at over 3x smaller total size. Step 3 (321B / 38B active, Apache 2.0) and Step3-VL-10B multimodal also in the family
| Category | Adobe Firefly | StepFun Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 9.0 | 6.0 |
| Output Quality | 7.0 | 8.0 |
| Value | 6.0 | 9.0 |
| Features | 7.0 | 8.0 |
| Overall | 7.3 | 7.8 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Adobe Firefly | StepFun Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Adobe Firefly if...
- ✓Easier to use (9 vs 6)
Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers who want AI generation baked into their existing workflow. Designers who need commercially safe images.
Visit Adobe FireflyPick StepFun Step 3.5 Flash if...
- ✓Higher output quality (8 vs 7)
- ✓Better value for money (9/10)
- ✓More features (8 vs 7)
Teams building agent systems on Chinese open-weight foundations who want something other than DeepSeek or Qwen, especially if agentic tool-use is the primary workload. Also good for Chinese-market products where StepFun's domestic tuning advantages matter. And for anyone looking to add diversity to their open-weight evaluation matrix beyond the top-3 Chinese labs.
Visit StepFun Step 3.5 FlashOur Verdict
StepFun Step 3.5 Flash edges out Adobe Firefly with a 7.8 vs 7.3 overall score. Both are solid picks, but StepFun Step 3.5 Flash has the advantage in output quality.