Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026noindex (thin pair)

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 benchmark

Name: Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 AI benchmark comparison
Creator: CompareLLM
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This page compares Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct (nousresearch) and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (Moonshot) using the latest snapshots we have as of Aug 17, 2026. Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct wins on output price at $1/1M. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 has the larger context window (262k tokens). Every cell below is a dated snapshot from a named public source — we do not invent missing scores, and we do not run SWE-bench ourselves.

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nousresearch

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct

Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (nousresearch/hermes-3-llama-3.1-405b). Preview until a second source matches.

$1/1M out

Moonshot

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (moonshotai/kimi-k2.5). Preview until a second source matches.

K2.5 MaxElo 1,515$2.8499999999999996/1M out

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Inference Compute Profile

Inference-Time Compute & Reasoning EffortDynamic CoT

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Reasoning Scaler & Token Billing Simulator

Param: thinking_mode

Reasoning models scale test-time compute by generating hidden chain-of-thought (CoT) tokens. These tokens are billed at standard output rates and directly expand latency (TTFT) in exchange for higher GPQA Diamond and SWE-bench Verified problem resolve rates.

Estimated TTFT

270 ms

1.0x (Standard eval)

CoT Thinking Tokens

~2,500

Billed as output tokens

Est. Cost / 1k Calls

$8.27

7.3x base invoice

STEM / SWE Boost

+5.5%

GPQA & SWE-bench scaling

Medium (Deep Reasoning) Operational Profile

Kimi Swarm reasoning trace for long-context planning.

Direct Provider APIMoonshot

"thinking_mode": "medium"

OpenRouter Unified APIUnified Gateway

"reasoning": {
  "effort": "medium",
  "max_tokens": 2500
}

Swap or Add Any Model to this Matchup

Instant pairwise benchmark recalculation across 400+ LLMs

Model A

Model B

Quick vs:vs Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct (1)vsMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (9)

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 1W (10%)Overall: MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 9W (90%)

← Nous: Hermes 3 405B InstructMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 →

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

—vs1,515

Coding Elo

—vs1,520

SWE-bench

—vs71.3%

LiveBench

—vs67.2%

GPQA Diamond

—vs87.6%

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 0WMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 5W

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

—vs72 tok/s

Time to first token

—vs270 ms

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 0WMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 2W

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$1/1Mvs$2.85/1M

Input price

$1/1Mvs$0.57/1M

Context window

131kvs262k

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 1WMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 2W

Capability Matchup Radar

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.

Tap any node to inspect

Percentile 0–100

Dimensional AdvantageMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 5/6

Preference Elo

No shared data

Throughput Speed

No shared data

Token Price Efficiency

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct

$1.85/1M cheaper

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

—

Elo

High is better

—

EloHigh is better

1,515

Code Elo

High is better

—

Code EloHigh is better

1,520

LiveBench

High is better

—

LiveBenchHigh is better

67.2%

SWE-bench

High is better

—

SWE-benchHigh is better

71.3%

GPQA

High is better

—

GPQAHigh is better

87.6%

TTFT

Low is better

—

TTFTLow is better

270 ms

Speed

High is better

—

SpeedHigh is better

72 tok/s

In $

Low is better

$1.00 / 1M

In $Low is better

$0.57 / 1M+75%

Out $

Low is better

+185%$1.00 / 1M

Out $Low is better

$2.85 / 1M

Context

High is better

131k

ContextHigh is better

262k+100%

Interactive Simulator (USD)

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Simulate monthly production API costs in USD (US Dollar).

Save up to 20% with Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct

Monthly Volume50M tokens/mo

Quick Presets:

Token Ratio (In vs Out)70% In / 30% Out

RAG / Search (10% out)Coding / Chat (50% out)

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct$50.00 / mo

In: $35Out: $15

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5$62.70 / mo

In: $19.95Out: $42.75

Estimated Cost Delta

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct is estimated to save $12.70/month ($152/year).

Based on 50M tokens (30% gen)

Key Selection Recommendations

1
Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct:Pick Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct when you are optimizing output cost.

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsinsufficient data

Need SWE-bench on both sides.

High-volume chatNous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct

Lower output list price ($1/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIinsufficient data

Need TTFT on both sides.

Long-document RAGMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

Larger window (262k).

Screenshots / visionMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	insufficient data	Need SWE-bench on both sides.
High-volume chat	Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct	Lower output list price ($1/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	insufficient data	Need TTFT on both sides.
Long-document RAG	MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5	Larger window (262k).
Screenshots / vision	MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5	MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Community Sentiment

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No comments posted on this matchup yet. Be the first to share an evaluation note!

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CompareLLM Matrix

Verified head-to-head card

LIVE

nousresearch

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct

Elo n/a

LiveBench—

SWE-bench—

Speed—

Output cost$1/1M

Moonshot

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

Elo 1,515

LiveBench67.2%

SWE-bench71.3%

Speed72 tok/s

Output cost$2.85/1M

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct or MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5?: We do not have preference Elo for both models, so we do not declare an overall winner. Compare the metrics that exist.
Which is better at coding, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct or MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5?: SWE-bench is missing for at least one model, so we do not rank coding from a single number.
Which is cheaper to run in production?: Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct output tokens are $1/1M versus $2.85/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.
Which is faster, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct or MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5?: We do not have TTFT for both models.
Which has the larger context window?: MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 accepts 262k tokens versus 131k.
Can I self-host either model?: Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.
Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?: No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.
What does preference Elo mean on this page?: Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

All Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct matchups →|All MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 matchups →

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 0711 (previous kimi)MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 vs Kimi K3 (next kimi)Kimi Chat 1.5 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Claude Opus 4.5 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Claude Opus 4.6 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 benchmark

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct (1)vsMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (9)

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 1W (10%)Overall: MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 9W (90%)

← Nous: Hermes 3 405B InstructMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 →

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

—vs1,515

Coding Elo

—vs1,520

SWE-bench

—vs71.3%

LiveBench

—vs67.2%

GPQA Diamond

—vs87.6%

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 0WMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 5W

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

—vs72 tok/s

Time to first token

—vs270 ms

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 0WMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 2W

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$1/1Mvs$2.85/1M

Input price

$1/1Mvs$0.57/1M

Context window

131kvs262k

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct: 1WMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5: 2W

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsinsufficient data

Need SWE-bench on both sides.

High-volume chatNous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct

Lower output list price ($1/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIinsufficient data

Need TTFT on both sides.

Long-document RAGMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

Larger window (262k).

Screenshots / visionMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	insufficient data	Need SWE-bench on both sides.
High-volume chat	Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct	Lower output list price ($1/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	insufficient data	Need TTFT on both sides.
Long-document RAG	MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5	Larger window (262k).
Screenshots / vision	MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5	MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct or MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5?

We do not have preference Elo for both models, so we do not declare an overall winner. Compare the metrics that exist.

Which is better at coding, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct or MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5?

SWE-bench is missing for at least one model, so we do not rank coding from a single number.

Which is cheaper to run in production?

Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct output tokens are $1/1M versus $2.85/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.

Which is faster, Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct or MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5?

We do not have TTFT for both models.

Which has the larger context window?

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 accepts 262k tokens versus 131k.

Can I self-host either model?

Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.

Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?

No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.

What does preference Elo mean on this page?

Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Nous: Hermes 3 405B Instruct and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.5 Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.