Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 1, 2026

Kimi Chat 1.5 vs Yi-Lightning benchmark

Name: Kimi Chat 1.5 vs Yi-Lightning AI benchmark comparison
Creator: CompareLLM
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This page compares Kimi Chat 1.5 (Moonshot) and Yi-Lightning (01.AI) using the latest snapshots we have as of Aug 1, 2026. On preference Elo, Yi-Lightning is ahead by 55 points (1,475 vs 1,420; seed-bootstrap (Aug 1, 2026)). On SWE-bench coding, Yi-Lightning resolves 63.4% versus 51% (seed-bootstrap (Aug 1, 2026)). Yi-Lightning streams faster (130 tok/s) while Yi-Lightning is the cheaper output token ($0.14/1M). Kimi Chat 1.5 has the larger context window (2M 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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Moonshot

Kimi Chat 1.5

Moonshot ultra-long context model supporting up to 2 million tokens per request.

Elo 1,420$0.8/1M out

01.AI

Yi-Lightning

01.AI ultra-fast reasoning model delivering top LiveBench efficiency.

Elo 1,475$0.14/1M out

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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.

Kimi Chat 1.5 (1)vsYi-Lightning (9)

Kimi Chat 1.5: 1W (10%)Overall: Yi-LightningYi-Lightning: 9W (90%)

← Kimi Chat 1.5Yi-Lightning →

Yi-Lightning (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

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

Preference Elo

1,420vs1,475

Coding Elo

1,390vs1,480

SWE-bench

51%vs63.4%

LiveBench

58%vs65%

GPQA Diamond

71.5%vs78%

Kimi Chat 1.5: 0WYi-Lightning: 5W

Yi-Lightning (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

95 tok/svs130 tok/s

Time to first token

210 msvs150 ms

Kimi Chat 1.5: 0WYi-Lightning: 2W

Yi-Lightning (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$0.8/1Mvs$0.14/1M

Input price

$0.2/1Mvs$0.14/1M

Context window

2Mvs16k

Kimi Chat 1.5: 1WYi-Lightning: 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 AdvantageYi-Lightning 5/6

Preference Elo

Yi-Lightning

55 pts advantage

Throughput Speed

Yi-Lightning

35 tok/s faster

Price Efficiency

Yi-Lightning

$0.66/1M cheaper

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

—

Elo

High is better

1,420

EloHigh is better

1,475+4%

Code Elo

High is better

1,390

Code EloHigh is better

1,480+6%

LiveBench

High is better

58%

LiveBenchHigh is better

65%+12%

SWE-bench

High is better

51%

SWE-benchHigh is better

63.4%+24%

GPQA

High is better

71.5%

GPQAHigh is better

78%+9%

TTFT

Low is better

210 ms

TTFTLow is better

150 ms+40%

Speed

High is better

95 tok/s

SpeedHigh is better

130 tok/s+37%

In $

Low is better

$0.2/1M

In $Low is better

$0.14/1M+43%

Out $

Low is better

$0.8/1M

Out $Low is better

$0.14/1M+471%

Context

High is better

+12107%2M

ContextHigh is better

16k

Interactive Simulator

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Simulate monthly production API costs based on published $/1M tokens.

Save up to 63% with Yi-Lightning

Monthly Volume50M tokens/mo

Quick Presets:

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

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

Kimi Chat 1.5$19.00 / mo

In: $7.00Out: $12.00

Yi-Lightning$7.00 / mo

In: $4.90Out: $2.10

Estimated Cost Delta

Yi-Lightning is estimated to save $12.00/month ($144/year).

Based on 50M tokens (30% gen)

Key Selection Recommendations

1
Yi-Lightning:Pick Yi-Lightning when repo-level coding accuracy is the constraint.
2
Yi-Lightning:Pick Yi-Lightning when time-to-first-token matters more than peak Elo.
3
Kimi Chat 1.5:Pick Kimi Chat 1.5 for million-token RAG or long-document jobs.

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsYi-Lightning

Higher SWE-bench (63.4%).

High-volume chatYi-Lightning

Lower output list price ($0.14/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIYi-Lightning

Lower TTFT (150 ms).

Long-document RAGKimi Chat 1.5

Larger window (2M).

Screenshots / visionYi-Lightning

Yi-Lightning is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	Yi-Lightning	Higher SWE-bench (63.4%).
High-volume chat	Yi-Lightning	Lower output list price ($0.14/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	Yi-Lightning	Lower TTFT (150 ms).
Long-document RAG	Kimi Chat 1.5	Larger window (2M).
Screenshots / vision	Yi-Lightning	Yi-Lightning is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Community Sentiment

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LIVE

Moonshot

Kimi Chat 1.5

Elo 1,420

LiveBench58%

SWE-bench51%

Speed95 tok/s

Output cost$0.8/1M

01.AI

Yi-Lightning

Elo 1,475

LiveBench65%

SWE-bench63.4%

Speed130 tok/s

Output cost$0.14/1M

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Kimi Chat 1.5 or Yi-Lightning?: Yi-Lightning has the higher preference Elo in our latest snapshot (1,475). “Better” still depends on coding, price, and latency — see the table.
Which is better at coding, Kimi Chat 1.5 or Yi-Lightning?: Yi-Lightning leads SWE-bench at 63.4% vs 51%. SWE-bench is one harness, not your repo.
Which is cheaper to run in production?: Yi-Lightning output tokens are $0.14/1M versus $0.8/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.
Which is faster, Kimi Chat 1.5 or Yi-Lightning?: Yi-Lightning has the lower time-to-first-token (150 ms vs 210 ms). Tokens/sec is a separate column if you care about long completions.
Which has the larger context window?: Kimi Chat 1.5 accepts 2M tokens versus 16k.
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. Kimi Chat 1.5 and Yi-Lightning Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

All Kimi Chat 1.5 matchups →|All Yi-Lightning matchups →

Kimi Chat 1.5 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 0711 (next kimi)Yi-Lightning vs Yi-Large (previous other)Yi-Lightning vs Ernie 4.5 Turbo (next other)Kimi K3 vs Yi-Lightning Yi-Large vs Kimi Chat 1.5 MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 0711 vs Yi-Lightning

Kimi Chat 1.5 vs Yi-Lightning benchmark

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Kimi Chat 1.5 (1)vsYi-Lightning (9)

Kimi Chat 1.5: 1W (10%)Overall: Yi-LightningYi-Lightning: 9W (90%)

← Kimi Chat 1.5Yi-Lightning →

Yi-Lightning (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

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

Preference Elo

1,420vs1,475

Coding Elo

1,390vs1,480

SWE-bench

51%vs63.4%

LiveBench

58%vs65%

GPQA Diamond

71.5%vs78%

Kimi Chat 1.5: 0WYi-Lightning: 5W

Yi-Lightning (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

95 tok/svs130 tok/s

Time to first token

210 msvs150 ms

Kimi Chat 1.5: 0WYi-Lightning: 2W

Yi-Lightning (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$0.8/1Mvs$0.14/1M

Input price

$0.2/1Mvs$0.14/1M

Context window

2Mvs16k

Kimi Chat 1.5: 1WYi-Lightning: 2W

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsYi-Lightning

Higher SWE-bench (63.4%).

High-volume chatYi-Lightning

Lower output list price ($0.14/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIYi-Lightning

Lower TTFT (150 ms).

Long-document RAGKimi Chat 1.5

Larger window (2M).

Screenshots / visionYi-Lightning

Yi-Lightning is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	Yi-Lightning	Higher SWE-bench (63.4%).
High-volume chat	Yi-Lightning	Lower output list price ($0.14/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	Yi-Lightning	Lower TTFT (150 ms).
Long-document RAG	Kimi Chat 1.5	Larger window (2M).
Screenshots / vision	Yi-Lightning	Yi-Lightning is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Kimi Chat 1.5 or Yi-Lightning?

Yi-Lightning has the higher preference Elo in our latest snapshot (1,475). “Better” still depends on coding, price, and latency — see the table.

Which is better at coding, Kimi Chat 1.5 or Yi-Lightning?

Yi-Lightning leads SWE-bench at 63.4% vs 51%. SWE-bench is one harness, not your repo.

Which is cheaper to run in production?

Yi-Lightning output tokens are $0.14/1M versus $0.8/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.

Which is faster, Kimi Chat 1.5 or Yi-Lightning?

Yi-Lightning has the lower time-to-first-token (150 ms vs 210 ms). Tokens/sec is a separate column if you care about long completions.

Which has the larger context window?

Kimi Chat 1.5 accepts 2M tokens versus 16k.

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. Kimi Chat 1.5 and Yi-Lightning Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.