Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Verdict
- Kimi K3 leads on quality: 66.5 vs 59.2.
- Kimi K3 is stronger in agents & tools, coding, composite, human preference, knowledge, long context, maths, multimodal.
- Qwen3.6 Plus is stronger in instruction following, reasoning.
- Qwen3.6 Plus is 5.3× cheaper ($1.13 vs $6.00 per 1M blended).
- Qwen3.6 Plus streams 1.5× faster (56 vs 38 tokens per second).
| Metric | Kimi K3 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| BenchLeader Index | 66.5 | 59.2 |
| Agents & tools score | 67.4 | 57.0 |
| Coding score | 65.0 | 52.8 |
| Composite score | 74.2 | 48.3 |
| Human preference score | 71.2 | 63.9 |
| Knowledge score | 68.2 | 59.0 |
| Long context score | 71.1 | 65.7 |
| Maths score | 78.1 | 56.7 |
| Multimodal score | 65.0 | 62.4 |
| Instruction following score | – | 73.0 |
| Reasoning score | – | 64.3 |
| Blended price $/M | $6.00 | $1.13 |
| Output speed | 38 tok/s | 56 tok/s |
| Time to first answer | 56.3 s | 101.1 s |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1M |
| GPQA Diamond | – | 88.4% |
| FrontierMath Tiers 1–3 | – | 38.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME | – | 93.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (Epoch) | – | 57.9% |
| SimpleQA Verified | – | 44.1% |
| SciCode | 58.7% | 40.7% |
| APEX-Agents | 39.3% | – |
| FrontierCode | 44.2% | – |
| ProofBench | 87.0% | – |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 157.6 | 147.7 |
| LMArena Text | – | 1444 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | – | 1468 |
| LMArena Coding | – | 1495 |
| LMArena WebDev | – | 1460 |
| LiveBench | 79.2% | 68.9% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 90.7% | 75.8% |
| LiveBench Coding | 81.5% | 78.2% |
| LiveBench Agentic Coding | 62.2% | 41.4% |
| LiveBench Mathematics | 84.4% | 83.7% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 78.7% | 69.9% |
| LiveBench Language | 85.5% | 75.0% |
| AA Intelligence Index | 43.8 | 27.0 |
| IFBench | – | 75.2% |
| AA-LCR | 88.7% | 78.3% |
| MMMU-Pro | 80.5% | 78.0% |
| AA-Omniscience | 19.7 | 0.9 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | – | 43.9% |
| GPQA Diamond (AA) | 93.5% | 88.2% |
| Humanity's Last Exam (AA) | 46.9% | 27.9% |
| SciCode (AA) | 59.5% | – |
| τ²-Bench Telecom (AA) | – | 97.7% |
| AIME (Vals) | – | 94.6% |
| LiveCodeBench | – | 86.0% |
| MMLU-Pro | – | 87.7% |
| LegalBench | 86.0% | 84.2% |
| CorpFin | 71.6% | 61.9% |
| TaxEval | 75.7% | 74.7% |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 80.9% | 53.2% |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 93.4% | 73.4% |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 92.9% | 87.4% |
| Vals Index | 57.8 | 32.0 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1339 | – |
Data as of 2026-09-10. Best configuration of each model; every score links to its source on the model pages.
Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 Plus: questions
- Is Kimi K3 better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
- Kimi K3 leads on quality: 66.5 vs 59.2. 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 Qwen3.6 Plus for coding?
- Kimi K3 scores higher in coding (65 vs 53 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Is Kimi K3 better than Qwen3.6 Plus for agentic tasks?
- Kimi K3 scores higher in agentic tasks (67 vs 57 on the category index, where 50 is average).
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
- Qwen3.6 Plus is cheaper: $1.13 against $6.00 per million tokens, blended at three input tokens per output token.
- Which is faster, Kimi K3 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
- Qwen3.6 Plus streams faster: 56 against 38 output tokens per second.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1.0M against 1M tokens.