Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 17, 2026noindex (thin pair)
In this head-to-head showdown, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 Thinking is more budget-friendly at $2.5/1M per 1M output tokens. Review the complete breakdown below to determine which model best fits your performance and budget requirements.
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Moonshot AI frontier flagship reasoning and agent swarm model with 256k context and top-tier SWE-bench coding capability.
Simulate accuracy gains vs added response time & token cost
Reasoning models “think before answering” by generating internal reasoning tokens. Higher effort improves math, coding, and logic accuracy, but increases response delay and token costs.
Single model data
No latency data
$2.5 / 1M output
Relative percentile scores computed across all active models in the benchmark catalog.
Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.
Category wins across reasoning intelligence, generation speed, and token cost.
Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy
Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness
Cost per million tokens and max context window length
| Benchmark | MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 Thinking | Kimi K3 | Advantage Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preference Elo | — | — | |
| Coding Elo | — | — | |
| LiveBench | — | — | |
| SWE-bench | — | — | |
| GPQA Diamond | — | — | |
| Time to first token | — | — | |
| Output speed | — | 68 tok/s | — |
| Input price | $0.6/1M | MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 Thinking (+$2.4/1M) | |
| Output price | $2.5/1M | MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 Thinking (+$12.5/1M) | |
| Context window | Kimi K3 (+786k) |
Simulate monthly production API costs in USD (US Dollar).
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 Thinking is estimated to save $271.50/month ($3,258/year).
Need SWE-bench on both sides.
Lower output list price ($2.5/1M).
Need TTFT on both sides.
Larger window (1M).
Kimi K3 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 | MoonshotAI: Kimi K2 Thinking | Lower output list price ($2.5/1M). |
| Voice / low-latency UI | insufficient data | Need TTFT on both sides. |
| Long-document RAG | Kimi K3 | Larger window (1M). |
| Screenshots / vision | Kimi K3 | Kimi K3 is the side marked multimodal in the catalog. |
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Verified head-to-head card
