Kimi K3 vs o3
Kimi K3 
o3 Verdict
- Kimi K3 leads on quality: 66.5 vs 60.4.
- Kimi K3 is stronger in coding, composite, human preference, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal.
- o3 is stronger in agents & tools, instruction following, reasoning.
- o3 is 1.7× cheaper ($3.50 vs $6.00 per 1M blended).
- o3 streams 2.7× faster (101 vs 38 tokens per second).
| Metric | Kimi K3 | o3 |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 66.5 | 60.4 |
| Agents & tools score | 67.4 | 70.3 |
| Coding score | 65.0 | 62.0 |
| Composite score | 74.2 | 54.5 |
| Human preference score | 71.2 | 62.4 |
| Knowledge score | 68.2 | 57.9 |
| Long context score | 71.1 | 63.8 |
| Maths score | 78.1 | – |
| Multimodal score | 65.0 | 57.9 |
| Instruction following score | – | 69.8 |
| Reasoning score | – | 61.6 |
| Blended price $/M | $6.00 | $3.50 |
| Output speed | 38 tok/s | 101 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 56.3 s | 7.7 s |
| Context window | 1.0M | 200k |
| SciCode | 58.7% | – |
| APEX-Agents | 39.3% | – |
| FrontierCode | 44.2% | – |
| ProofBench | 87.0% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 157.6 | 146.9 |
| LMArena Text | – | 1431 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | – | 1441 |
| LMArena Coding | – | 1460 |
| LMArena Vision | – | 1214 |
| 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 | 43.8 | 20.2 |
| IFBench | – | 71.4% |
| AA-LCR | 88.7% | 74.7% |
| MMMU-Pro | 80.5% | 70.1% |
| AA-Omniscience | 19.7 | -15.6 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | – | 37.1% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 93.5% | 82.7% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 46.9% | 20.1% |
| SciCode (AA) | 59.5% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | – | 80.7% |
| LegalBench | 86.0% | – |
| CorpFin | 71.6% | – |
| TaxEval | 75.7% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 80.9% | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 93.4% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 92.9% | – |
| Vals Index | 57.8 | – |
| PRBench Finance | – | 47.7% |
| PRBench Legal | – | 48.6% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1339 | – |
| MMMU (validation) | – | 82.9% |
| MMMU-Pro (official) | – | 76.4% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | – | 67.6% |
| Aider Polyglot | – | 81.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | – | 58.4% |
| SWE-bench Verified (any scaffold) | – | 58.4% |
| BFCL Overall | – | 63.0% |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Kimi K3 vs o3: questions
- Is Kimi K3 better than o3?
- Kimi K3 leads on quality: 66.5 vs 60.4. 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 K3 better than o3 for coding?
- Kimi K3 scores higher in coding (65 vs 62 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Kimi K3 better than o3 for agentic tasks?
- o3 scores higher in agentic tasks (70 vs 67 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or o3?
- o3 is cheaper: $3.50 against $6.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Kimi K3 or o3?
- o3 streams faster: 101 against 38 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1.0M against 200k tokens.