Kimi K2.6 vs Kimi K3
Kimi K2.6 Verdict
- Kimi K3 leads on quality: 66.5 vs 60.7.
- Kimi K2.6 is stronger in instruction following, reasoning.
- Kimi K3 is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, human preference, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal.
- Kimi K2.6 is 3.5× cheaper ($1.71 vs $6.00 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Kimi K2.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 60.7 | 66.5 |
| Agents & tools score | 45.1 | 67.4 |
| Coding score | 60.4 | 65.0 |
| Composite score | 68.6 | 74.2 |
| Human preference score | 60.8 | 71.2 |
| Instruction following score | 73.7 | – |
| Knowledge score | 58.6 | 68.2 |
| Long context score | 67.1 | 71.1 |
| Maths score | 53.8 | 78.1 |
| Multimodal score | 63.7 | 65.0 |
| Reasoning score | 66.0 | – |
| Blended price $/M | $1.71 | $6.00 |
| Output speed | 44 tok/s | 38 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 103.2 s | 56.3 s |
| Context window | 262k | 1.0M |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.8% | – |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | 57.2% | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 25.6% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 96.1% | – |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | 76.7% | – |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.9% | – |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | 4.6% | – |
| SciCode | 53.5% | 58.7% |
| WeirdML | 55.9% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 18.9% | 39.3% |
| FrontierCode | – | 44.2% |
| ProofBench | 16.0% | 87.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 151.0 | 157.6 |
| LMArena Text | 1461 | – |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | – |
| LMArena Coding | 1514 | – |
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | – |
| LMArena Vision | 1281 | – |
| LiveBench | – | 79.2% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | – | 90.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | – | 81.5% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | – | 62.2% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | – | 84.4% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | – | 78.7% |
| LiveBench Language | – | 85.5% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.3 | 43.8 |
| IFBench | 76.0% | – |
| AA-LCR | 81.0% | 88.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.4% | 80.5% |
| AA-Omniscience | 5.3 | 19.7 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 43.9% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 91.1% | 93.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 37.5% | 46.9% |
| SciCode (AA) | 51.5% | 59.5% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 95.9% | – |
| LiveCodeBench | 86.8% | – |
| MMLU-Pro | 87.6% | – |
| LegalBench | 84.7% | 86.0% |
| CorpFin | 66.7% | 71.6% |
| TaxEval | 74.7% | 75.7% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 53.6% | 80.9% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 76.2% | 93.4% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 89.1% | 92.9% |
| Vals Index | 43.5 | 57.8 |
| HiL-Bench | 18.7% | – |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1202 | 1339 |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Kimi K2.6 vs Kimi K3: questions
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Kimi K3?
- Kimi K3 leads on quality: 66.5 vs 60.7. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Kimi K3 is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Kimi K3 for coding?
- Kimi K3 scores higher in coding (65 vs 60 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Kimi K3 for agentic tasks?
- Kimi K3 scores higher in agentic tasks (67 vs 45 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Kimi K3?
- Kimi K2.6 is cheaper: $1.71 against $6.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Kimi K2.6 or Kimi K3?
- Kimi K2.6 streams faster: 44 against 38 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1.0M against 262k tokens.