Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3 8
Kimi K2.6 
Qwen3 8 Verdict
- Qwen3 8 (max) leads on quality: 63.6 vs 60.7.
- Kimi K2.6 is stronger in instruction following, long context.
- Qwen3 8 (max) is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, human preference, knowledge, maths, multimodal, reasoning.
- Kimi K2.6 is 1.6× cheaper ($1.71 vs $2.67 per 1M blended).
| Metric | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3 8 (max) |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 60.7 | 63.6 |
| Agents & tools score | 45.1 | 56.0 |
| Coding score | 60.4 | 69.7 |
| Composite score | 68.6 | 70.9 |
| Human preference score | 60.8 | 68.3 |
| Instruction following score | 73.7 | – |
| Knowledge score | 58.6 | 62.3 |
| Long context score | 67.1 | 65.7 |
| Maths score | 53.8 | 62.4 |
| Multimodal score | 63.7 | 67.2 |
| Reasoning score | 66.0 | 68.1 |
| Blended price $/M | $1.71 | $2.67 |
| Output speed | 44 tok/s | 38 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 103.2 s | 55.3 s |
| Context window | 262k | 1M |
| 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% | 52.9% |
| WeirdML | 55.9% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 18.9% | – |
| ProofBench | 16.0% | 58.0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 151.0 | 156.6 |
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1480 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | 1502 |
| LMArena Coding | 1514 | 1520 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | 1670 |
| LMArena Vision | 1281 | 1313 |
| LMArena Agent | – | 3.9 |
| LiveBench | – | 78.5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | – | 88.2% |
| LiveBench Coding | – | 72.9% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | – | 64.7% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | – | 91.3% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | – | 78.4% |
| LiveBench Language | – | 79.7% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 31.3 | 40.3 |
| IFBench | 76.0% | – |
| AA-LCR | 81.0% | 78.3% |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.4% | 82.3% |
| AA-Omniscience | 5.3 | 3.4 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | 43.9% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 91.1% | 92.7% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 37.5% | 43.0% |
| SciCode (AA) | 51.5% | 53.2% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | 95.9% | – |
| LiveCodeBench | 86.8% | 87.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | 87.6% | 88.6% |
| IOI | – | 73.0% |
| LegalBench | 84.7% | 83.6% |
| CorpFin | 66.7% | 65.8% |
| TaxEval | 74.7% | 75.5% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 53.6% | 67.4% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 76.2% | 85.6% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 89.1% | 93.7% |
| Vals Index | 43.5 | 51.8 |
| 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 8: questions
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3 8?
- Qwen3 8 (max) leads on quality: 63.6 vs 60.7. The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; Qwen3 8 (max) is ahead overall as of 2026-09-10, but check the category scores for your use.
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3 8 for coding?
- Qwen3 8 scores higher in coding (70 vs 60 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3 8 for agentic tasks?
- Qwen3 8 scores higher in agentic tasks (56 vs 45 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3 8?
- Kimi K2.6 is cheaper: $1.71 against $2.67 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3 8?
- Kimi K2.6 streams faster: 44 against 38 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Qwen3 8 accepts more context: 1M against 262k tokens.