Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3 6
Kimi K2.6 
Qwen3 6 Verdict
- Qwen3 6 (max) leads on quality: 63.3 vs 60.7.
- Kimi K2.6 is stronger in coding, composite, long context, multimodal, reasoning.
- Qwen3 6 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, human preference, instruction following, knowledge, maths.
- Kimi K2.6 is 1.7× cheaper ($1.71 vs $2.96 per 1M blended).
- Qwen3 6 (max) streams 1.3× faster (59 vs 44 tokens per second).
| Metric | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3 6 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 60.7 | 63.3 |
| Agents & tools score | 45.1 | 72.0 |
| Coding score | 60.4 | 58.2 |
| Composite score | 68.6 | 64.9 |
| Human preference score | 60.8 | 65.9 |
| Instruction following score | 73.7 | 74.2 |
| Knowledge score | 58.6 | 64.0 |
| Long context score | 67.1 | 66.9 |
| Maths score | 53.8 | 64.2 |
| Multimodal score | 63.7 | – |
| Reasoning score | 66.0 | 63.2 |
| Blended price $/M | $1.71 | $2.96 |
| Output speed | 44 tok/s | 59 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 103.2 s | 38.5 s |
| Context window | 262k | 246k |
| GPQA Diamond | 90.8% | 87.4% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | 57.2% | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 25.6% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 96.1% | 91.1% |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | 76.7% | 76.7% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.9% | 52.0% |
| SimpleBench | – | 63.0% |
| OSWorld-Verified 2.0 | 4.6% | – |
| SciCode | 53.5% | – |
| WeirdML | 55.9% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 18.9% | – |
| ProofBench | 16.0% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 151.0 | 149.3 |
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1460 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1514 | 1509 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | 1479 |
| LMArena Vision | 1281 | – |
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.3 | 28.4 |
| IFBench | 76.0% | 76.6% |
| AA-LCR | 81.0% | 80.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.4% | – |
| AA-Omniscience | 5.3 | 9.2 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 43.9% | 43.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 91.1% | 88.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 37.5% | 30.8% |
| SciCode (AA) | 51.5% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 95.9% | 95.9% |
| LiveCodeBench | 86.8% | – |
| MMLU-Pro | 87.6% | – |
| LegalBench | 84.7% | – |
| CorpFin | 66.7% | 66.5% |
| TaxEval | 74.7% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 53.6% | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 76.2% | 72.8% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 89.1% | – |
| Vals Index | 43.5 | – |
| HiL-Bench | 18.7% | – |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1202 | – |
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 Qwen3 6: questions
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3 6?
- Qwen3 6 (max) leads on quality: 63.3 vs 60.7. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Qwen3 6 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3 6 for coding?
- Kimi K2.6 scores higher in coding (60 vs 58 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3 6 for agentic tasks?
- Qwen3 6 scores higher in agentic tasks (72 vs 45 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3 6?
- Kimi K2.6 is cheaper: $1.71 against $2.96 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3 6?
- Qwen3 6 streams faster: 59 against 44 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Kimi K2.6 accepts more context: 262k against 246k tokens.