If you have been meaning to test Step 3.7 Flash through Nous Portal but ran out of time, you just got a second chance. Nous Research is extending the free usage period by 15 additional days, pushing the deadline for no-cost access into mid-July.
The extension comes exactly one month after the original 30-day free period kicked off on May 30. Step 3.7 Flash is a multimodal MoE vision-language model from StepFun (the Chinese AI company behind the Step series of models). It uses a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture with 198 billion total parameters and just 11 billion active — meaning it can punch well above its compute budget on the right tasks.
What Step 3.7 Flash Actually Does
The model is built for agent workflows first. It handles images and video natively (no separate vision model needed), supports 256K token context windows, and has reliable tool-calling capabilities for multi-step task decomposition. StepFun positions it as a high-speed reasoning model optimized for coding, search, and agentic pipelines.
On the integration side, Step 3.7 Flash plays well with the current ecosystem: it works with Hermes Agent, Claude Code, Cline, Roo Code, and OpenCode. The StepFun API platform also supports an Anthropic-compatible Messages API, so you can plug it into existing agent setups without major rewiring.
Why the Extension Matters
The original 30-day window covered initial curiosity, but 45 days is enough time to actually build something meaningful and evaluate whether the model fits into production workflows. For developers who have been running Hermes Agent or other agent frameworks, this means more time to compare Step 3.7 Flash against the usual suspects without reaching for a credit card.
It also signals that the Nous Research and StepFun partnership is holding. Extending free access rather than letting it expire quietly on schedule suggests the integration is gaining real usage and both sides want to keep the momentum going.
Caveats to Keep in Mind
The exact end date of the extended period depends on when the clock started ticking on your individual free access through Nous Portal. If you activated on day one of the original launch (May 30), your free window now runs through roughly July 14. If you started later, the 15-day extension applies from wherever you were in the original 30-day window.
Beyond the free period, Step 3.7 Flash pricing runs at 1.35 yuan per million input tokens (cache miss) and 8.1 yuan per million output tokens on StepFun’s platform. Nous Portal pricing beyond the free tier has not been detailed.
Bottom Line
If you have been running Hermes Agent or any agent framework that supports external models, this is a good excuse to put Step 3.7 Flash through its paces. Forty-five days of free access to a 198B MoE model with native vision is not nothing. Use the extra time while it lasts.
