Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 Max
Full profiles: Kimi K3 (Moonshot AI) and Qwen3.6 Max (Alibaba): every benchmark, price and rank.
Updated · Data from 11 sources
As of 2 Nov 2026, Kimi K3 and Qwen3.6 Max are neck and neck on quality (62.1 vs 62.4 on the BenchLeader Index, inside the ±4.2 margin), and Qwen3.6 Max is 2.1× cheaper at $2.92 vs $6.00 per 1M tokens blended. Choose Kimi K3 for coding (64 vs 56), long context (69 vs 65), and human preference (68 vs 65); choose Qwen3.6 Max for agents & tools (72 vs 59), reasoning (63 vs 60), and maths (65 vs 63).
Key facts (as of 2 Nov 2026)
- Kimi K3 scores 62.1 on the BenchLeader Index and Qwen3.6 Max scores 62.4 (BenchLeader, 2 Nov 2026).
- Kimi K3 costs $6.00 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 2 Nov 2026).
- Qwen3.6 Max costs $2.92 per 1M tokens blended (list price, 2 Nov 2026).
- Of the 19 benchmarks both models have, Kimi K3 leads 17 (BenchLeader, 2 Nov 2026).
- On Arena WebDev, Kimi K3 is rated 1656 and Qwen3.6 Max 1482 (LMArena, as published by 2 Nov 2026).
Kimi K3 benchmarks 
Qwen3.6 Max benchmarks Which to pick for…
The pick's numbers come first. Category scores on the BenchLeader scale (50 is the average model, 15 points one standard deviation). High confidence means a lead of half a standard deviation or more; under one point is called either.
| Use case | Pick | Why | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | Kimi K3 | 64 vs 56 category score; Arena WebDev 1656 vs 1482 | High |
| Agents & tool use | Qwen3.6 Max | 72 vs 59 category score | High |
| Maths | Qwen3.6 Max | 65 vs 63 category score; Arena Maths 1476 vs 1499 | Medium |
| Reasoning | Qwen3.6 Max | 63 vs 60 category score; SimpleBench 63.0% vs 60.7% | Medium |
| Knowledge | Either | 60 vs 60 category score; SimpleQA Verified 50.6% vs 52.0% | Either |
| Long documents | Kimi K3 | 69 vs 65 category score; AA-LCR v1.1 88.7% vs 80.7% | Medium |
| Chat quality (human preference) | Kimi K3 | 68 vs 65 on Arena votes | Medium |
| Lowest cost | Qwen3.6 Max | $2.96 vs $6.00 per 1M blended; agentic coding session $0.111 vs $0.240 | – |
| High volume on a budget | Neither flagship | A smaller model is usually the better fit: Cheapest good LLMs, Fastest LLMs | – |
Key differences
- Kimi K3 (max) and Qwen3.6 Max (max) are neck and neck on quality (62.1 vs 62.4, within the ±4.2 margin).
- Kimi K3 (max) is stronger in coding, human preference, long context, multimodal.
- Qwen3.6 Max (max) is stronger in agents & tools, knowledge, maths, reasoning, instruction following.
- Qwen3.6 Max (max) is 2.0× cheaper ($2.96 vs $6.00 per 1M blended).
At a glance
| Spec | Kimi K3 | Qwen3.6 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Moonshot AI | Alibaba |
| Released | 16 Jul 2026 | 20 Apr 2026 |
| Context window (tokens) | 1,048,576 | 245,800 |
| Compared at | Kimi K3 (max) | Qwen3.6 Max (max) |
| Open weights | Yes | No |
| Price in / out / cached input per 1M | $3.00 / $15.00 / $0.300 | $1.32 / $7.90 / $0.132 |
Category by category
Category scores on the BenchLeader scale: 50 is the average evaluated model, 15 points is one standard deviation. A gap under one point is called level.
| Category | Kimi K3 (max) | Qwen3.6 Max (max) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 60.0 | 62.7 | Qwen3.6 Max |
| Coding | 64.4 | 56.3 | Kimi K3 |
| Agents & tools | 59.2 | 72.1 | Qwen3.6 Max |
| Maths | 63.2 | 64.7 | Qwen3.6 Max |
| Knowledge | 59.8 | 60.0 | level |
| Instruction following | – | 74.6 | not comparable |
| Human preference | 68.0 | 64.6 | Kimi K3 |
| Multimodal | 63.1 | – | not comparable |
| Long context | 69.4 | 65.2 | Kimi K3 |
On one chart
Each domain on the index's own scale, where 50 is an average model. Click a domain to see the benchmarks behind it. Pick up to 5 models from the list.
Not drawn, measured for fewer than two of these models: Instruction following, Multimodal.
ModelIndex
Where sources disagree
Across the 19 benchmarks both have, Kimi K3 leads 17, Qwen3.6 Max leads 2. Every overall index that rates both puts Kimi K3 ahead.
| Overall index | Kimi K3 (max) | Qwen3.6 Max (max) | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 62.1 | 62.4 | neck and neck |
| Arena Text | 1488 | 1460 | Kimi K3 |
Each publisher runs its own tasks, harnesses and effort settings, so their overall verdicts can differ; BenchLeader reconciles them on one scale. † measured at another effort setting of the same model (the publisher did not test the one compared here).
Price, speed and latency
List prices blended at three input tokens per output token. Per-task prices use the token counts on the methodology page. Cost, tokens and time per benchmark task are measured: Artificial Analysis’ averages over its whole Intelligence Index run.
| Measure | Kimi K3 (max) | Qwen3.6 Max (max) |
|---|---|---|
| Blended price per 1M tokens | $6.00 | $2.96 |
| Input / output per 1M | $3.00 / $15.00 | $1.32 / $7.90 |
| Cached input per 1M | $0.300 | $0.132 |
| Price per task: chat reply | $0.0057 | $0.0029 |
| Price per task: summarize a 30-page report | $0.045 | $0.021 |
| Price per task: code edit | $0.041 | $0.020 |
| Price per task: agentic coding session | $0.240 | $0.111 |
| Price per task: structured extraction | $0.0090 | $0.0042 |
| Agentic coding session, input mostly cached | $0.118 | $0.057 |
| Output speed | 66 tok/s | – |
| Time to first answer | 37.2 s | – |
| Time to a complete answer | 44.8 s | – |
Each model is compared at its best-ranked reasoning-effort setting. Kimi K3 (max) scores 62.1 and takes 37 s to its first answer token; Kimi K3 scores 59.1 in 1 s, Kimi K3 (low) scores 53.8 in 40 s. Qwen3.6 Max (max) scores 62.4. Higher effort means more thinking before the answer: better scores, longer waits and more tokens billed. How reasoning effort changes scores and cost.
Every benchmark
147 benchmarks, grouped by category; each name links to the board and its leaders. † measured at another effort setting of the same model, shown for reference and not counted as a win.
| Metric | Publisher | Kimi K3 (max) | Qwen3.6 Max (max) |
|---|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | BenchLeader | 62.1 | 62.4 |
| Agents & tools score | BenchLeader | 59.2 | 72.1 |
| Coding score | BenchLeader | 64.4 | 56.3 |
| Human preference score | BenchLeader | 68.0 | 64.6 |
| Knowledge score | BenchLeader | 59.8 | 60.0 |
| Long context score | BenchLeader | 69.4 | 65.2 |
| Maths score | BenchLeader | 63.2 | 64.7 |
| Multimodal score | BenchLeader | 63.1 | – |
| Reasoning score | BenchLeader | 60.0 | 62.7 |
| Instruction following score | BenchLeader | – | 74.6 |
| Blended price $/M | BenchLeader | $6.00 | $2.96 |
| Output speed | BenchLeader | 66 tok/s | – |
| Time to first answer | BenchLeader | 37.2 s | – |
| Context window | BenchLeader | 1,048,576 tokens | 245,800 tokens |
| Reasoning | |||
| GPQA Diamond | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 93.1% | 87.4% |
| SimpleBench | SimpleBench | 60.7% | 63.0% |
| Arena Hard Prompts | Arena (LMArena) | 1517 | 1482 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 90.7%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Reasoning | LiveBench | 90.7%† | – |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 93.5% | 88.8% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 46.9% | 30.8% |
| HLE-Diamond (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 26.9% | – |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Vals AI | 92.9%† | – |
| ARC-AGI-1 | ARC Prize | 94.5% | – |
| ARC-AGI-2 | ARC Prize | 60.4% | – |
| CritPt | Artificial Analysis | 23.4% | 3.7% |
| CritPt v2 hard subset (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 39.5% | – |
| Chess Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 36.0% | – |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 26.0% | 19.0%† |
| LMCA | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 52.7% | 42.5% |
| DTBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 91.2% | 87.2% |
| ForecastBench | ForecastBench | 64.7% | – |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | – | 76.7% |
| SciCode | SciCode | 59.5% | – |
| WeirdML | WeirdML | 82.6% | – |
| FrontierCode | Cognition | 44.2%† | – |
| Arena Coding | Arena (LMArena) | 1540 | 1511 |
| Arena WebDev | Arena (LMArena) | 1656 | 1482 |
| LiveBench 2.0 Coding | LiveBench | 59.3%† | – |
Show all 147 benchmarks
| Metric | Publisher | Kimi K3 (max) | Qwen3.6 Max (max) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | |||
| LiveBench 1.0 Coding | LiveBench | 81.5%† | – |
| LiveCodeBench | Vals AI | 87.2% | – |
| IOI | Vals AI | 48.9% | – |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Vals AI | 93.4%† | 72.8% |
| Code Migration | Vals AI | 16.1% | – |
| Code Migration v1.1 | Vals AI | 28.6% | – |
| ProgramBench | Vals AI | 2.0%† | – |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Vals AI | 44.2% | – |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 | Vals AI | 18.2% | – |
| Vibe Code Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 85.0% | – |
| Surface Evolver Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 93.0% | – |
| DeepSWE v1.1 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 68.5% | – |
| ALE-Bench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 1524.5 | – |
| FrontierSWE | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 25.9% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 12.6% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 85.0% | – |
| Startrise Frontend | Startrise | 79.8%† | – |
| GameBench 2 Overall | DuelLab GameBench 2 | 48.8† | – |
| GameBench 2 by reasoning setting | DuelLab GameBench 2 | 45.1 | – |
| FrontierCode 1.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 43.6% | – |
| FrontierCode 2.0 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 10.9%† | – |
| Agents & tools | |||
| APEX-Agents | Mercor | 47.8%† | – |
| Arena Agent | Arena (LMArena) | 1.1 | – |
| LiveBench Long Agentic | LiveBench | 26.4%† | – |
| LiveBench Browser | LiveBench | 75.2%† | – |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | LiveBench | 62.2%† | – |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | Artificial Analysis | – | 43.9% |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | Artificial Analysis | – | 95.9% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Vals AI | 80.9%† | – |
| MCP Atlas | Scale AI SEAL | 82.3% | – |
| HiL-Bench | Scale AI SEAL | 42.7%† | – |
| τ³-bench Banking | τ²-bench | 37.1% | – |
| τ³-Banking (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 46.0% | – |
| ITBench SRE (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 47.7% | – |
| Analyst Agent (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 38.8% | – |
| APEX-Agents (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 41.3% | – |
| CyberBench | Vals AI | 75.2% | – |
| Finance Agent v2 | Vals AI | 53.1% | – |
| Finance Agent v2.1 | Vals AI | 60.0% | – |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 12.9% | – |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark v1 | Vals AI | 12.9% | – |
| Legal Research Bench | Vals AI | 46.1% | – |
| Tax Agent Bench | Vals AI | 33.4% | – |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | – | 51.7% |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Vals) | Vals AI | 17.2% | – |
| Terminal-Bench Science | Vals AI | 1.4% | – |
| Time Horizon Index: KSP | Vals AI | 10.5% | – |
| PostTrainBench | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 32.0%† | – |
| GBAEval | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 48.4%† | – |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Andon Labs | 5165.0† | 4254.2 |
| AutomationBench | Artificial Analysis | 58.3% | – |
| GDP.pdf (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 22.0% | – |
| Harvey LAB-AA v1.1 | Harvey | 5.3% | – |
| EnterpriseOps-Gym | Artificial Analysis | 45.3% | – |
| AA-Briefcase v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 1498 | – |
| GDPx | GDPx by SemiAnalysis | 3.7% | – |
| Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 8.1% | – |
| CWE-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 53.3% | – |
| DeepSec-Bench (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 12.4% | – |
| CyberGym end-to-end (AA) | Artificial Analysis | 58.0% | – |
| Maths | |||
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 72.2% | – |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 39.0% | – |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 97.2% | 91.1% |
| ProofBench | Vals AI | 87.0%† | – |
| LiveBench Mathematics | LiveBench | 84.4%† | – |
| AIME 2026 | MathArena | 96.7%† | – |
| HMMT February 2026 | MathArena | 97.0%† | – |
| MathArena Apex | MathArena | 65.6%† | – |
| Arena Maths | Arena (LMArena) | 1499 | 1476 |
| Knowledge | |||
| SimpleQA Verified | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 50.6% | 52.0% |
| LiveBench 2.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 78.7%† | – |
| LiveBench Research | LiveBench | 79.0%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 Data Analysis | LiveBench | 78.7%† | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | -1.7† | – |
| MMLU-Pro | Vals AI | 88.0% | – |
| LegalBench | Vals AI | 86.2% | – |
| CorpFin | Vals AI | 71.6%† | 66.5% |
| TaxEval | Vals AI | 75.7%† | – |
| BioMysteryBench | Vals AI | 72.6% | – |
| CaseLaw v2 | Vals AI | – | 47.9% |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark | Vals AI | 66.7% | – |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1 | Vals AI | 71.3% | – |
| MedCode | Vals AI | 49.4% | – |
| MedScribe | Vals AI | 88.0% | – |
| Public Benefits Bench v1.1 | Vals AI | 68.2% | – |
| GDP.pdf | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 19.0% | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: accuracy | Artificial Analysis | 42.4%† | – |
| AA-Omniscience v1.1: non-hallucination | Artificial Analysis | 23.4%† | – |
| HealthBench Professional (AA) | OpenAI | 53.2% | – |
| Instruction following | |||
| LiveBench Language | LiveBench | 85.5%† | – |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | LiveBench | 71.4%† | – |
| IFBench | Artificial Analysis | – | 76.6% |
| Arena Instruction Following | Arena (LMArena) | 1490 | 1451 |
| Human preference | |||
| Arena Text | Arena (LMArena) | 1488 | 1460 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | EQ-Bench | 1319† | – |
| Arena Creative Writing | Arena (LMArena) | 1463 | 1437 |
| Arena Multi-turn | Arena (LMArena) | 1502 | 1467 |
| Arena Longer Queries | Arena (LMArena) | 1503 | 1473 |
| Multimodal | |||
| LiveBench Design | LiveBench | 77.2%† | – |
| MMMU-Pro | Artificial Analysis | 80.5% | – |
| MMMU-Pro (Vals) | Vals AI | 88.2%† | – |
| MortgageTax | Vals AI | 66.3%† | – |
| SAGE | Vals AI | 86.8% | – |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 29.5%† | – |
| Code2Video-AA | Artificial Analysis | 1041 | – |
| AA-3D | Artificial Analysis | 982 | – |
| Long context | |||
| AA-LCR v1.1 | Artificial Analysis | 88.7% | 80.7% |
| MLCR | Artificial Analysis | 21.7% | – |
| Composite | |||
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Epoch AI Benchmarking Hub | 158.3† | 149.4 |
| LiveBench 2.0 | LiveBench | 64.6%† | – |
| LiveBench 1.0 | LiveBench | 79.2%† | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v5.0 | Artificial Analysis | 17.4† | – |
| AA Intelligence Index v4.3.2 | Artificial Analysis | 43.6 | 28.4 |
| AA Progress Index v1 | Artificial Analysis | 319.9 | 297.1 |
| Vals Index | Vals AI | 53.0 | – |
| Vals Finance Index | Vals AI | 58.0% | – |
| Vals RSI Index | Vals AI | 20.9% | – |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Vals AI | 73.4%† | – |
| Vals Router Index | Vals AI | 53.0%† | – |
| AA Cyber Index | Artificial Analysis | 41.3 | – |
| Safety & honesty | |||
| FORTRESS | Scale AI SEAL | 26.6% | – |
| Metadata | |||
| AA Openness Index | Artificial Analysis | 38.9 | – |
Data as of 2026-11-02. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
DuelLab GameBench 2, release gb2-20261026-cb69502a12d9 (https://benchmarks.duellab.org/releases/gb2-20261026-cb69502a12d9/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Scores mapped to BenchLeader model names; not endorsed by DuelLab.
What changed
- Kimi K3 (max): 1 new result (MirrorCode).
- Kimi K3 (max): 1 score revision.
- Kimi K3 (max): BenchLeader Index 63.1 → 62.1.
- Kimi K3 (max): 3 new results (AA Progress Index v1, HLE-Diamond (AA), CritPt v2 hard subset (AA)); 1 score revision.
- Qwen3.6 Max (max): 1 new result (AA Progress Index v1).
- Kimi K3 (max): 7 new results (Code Migration v1.1, Excel Modeling Benchmark v1.1, Finance Agent v2.1…).
- Qwen3.6 Max (max): BenchLeader Index 63.3 → 62.8.
- Kimi K3 (max): 1 new result (Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1 (AA)); 1 score revision.
- Kimi K3 (max): 3 score revisions.
- Kimi K3 (max): 1 score revision.
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- Qwen3.6 Max vs Claude Opus 5.5
- Qwen3.6 Max vs Gemini 4 Carbon
- Qwen3.6 Max vs GPT-6 Astra
- Qwen3.6 Max vs GPT-6.1 Sol
- Kimi K3 vs Claude Fable 5.1
Rankings: Best LLM overall · Best LLM for agents · Best cheap LLMs
Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 Max: questions
- Is Kimi K3 better than Qwen3.6 Max?
- Kimi K3 (max) and Qwen3.6 Max (max) are neck and neck on quality (62.1 vs 62.4, within the ±4.2 margin). The BenchLeader Index combines every independent quality benchmark; the two are within the margin of error as of 2 Nov 2026, so check the category scores for your use.
- Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 Max: which is cheaper, and will that change?
- Qwen3.6 Max is cheaper today: $2.92 against $6.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token. No price change has been announced for either.
- Is Kimi K3 or Qwen3.6 Max better for coding?
- Kimi K3 scores higher in coding (64 vs 56 on the category index, where 50 is average). On Arena WebDev, the top shared coding benchmark, it is 1656 for Kimi K3 against 1482 for Qwen3.6 Max.
- Is Kimi K3 or Qwen3.6 Max better for agents and tool use?
- Qwen3.6 Max scores higher in agentic tasks (72 vs 59 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is better for long documents?
- Kimi K3 scores higher on long-context benchmarks (69 vs 65). Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1,048,576 against 245,800 tokens for Qwen3.6 Max.
More questions (2)
- Do independent benchmarks agree on Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 Max?
- Across the 19 benchmarks both have, Kimi K3 leads 17, Qwen3.6 Max leads 2. Every overall index that rates both puts Kimi K3 ahead.
- When was Kimi K3 released?
- Kimi K3 was released on 16 Jul 2026.