Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Kimi K3
Kimi K3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 59.5 to 50.3 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 44 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 44 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 1 category and Kimi K3 in 9 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Kimi K3 leads 74.2 to 52.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ProofBench: 45% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 87% for Kimi K3.
- Both cost about the same: $3 input and $15 output per million tokens.
- Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.
- Kimi K3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Moonshot AI |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 59.5 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2026-07-16 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 1.05M |
| Max output | 128K | 1.05M |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $3 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $15 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 53 |
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Category by category
Coding Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), Kimi K3: 61.0 (#10)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | 68.5% |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | 44.2% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | 1654 |
| SciCode | 46.8% | 59.5% |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | 82.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1508 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | 1,524 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| FrontierSWE | — | 25.9% |
Agentic & Tool Use Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), Kimi K3: 41.8 (#20)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 43% | 50.6% |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | 48.3% |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | 19% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | 5,165 |
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 37.1% |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| PostTrainBench | — | 32% |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
Reasoning Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), Kimi K3: 63.0 (#17)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | 60.4% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | 93.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | 94.5% |
| CritPt | 3.1% | 23.4% |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 39% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1496 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | 26% |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 91.2% |
| LMCA | 46.5% | 52.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | 157.45 |
| ForecastBench | 62 | 61.1 |
| SimpleBench | — | 60.7% |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 95% |
Math Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), Kimi K3: 74.2 (#16)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 97.2% |
| ProofBench | 45% | 87% |
| LMArena Math | 1462 | 1491 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 72.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 39% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 87.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), Kimi K3: 63.2 (#21)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 93.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | 50.6% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1521 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
Multimodal Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), Kimi K3: 37.8 (#70)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | 29.5% |
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Furniture Assembly | — | 34.2% |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), Kimi K3: 56.3 (#21)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1466 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1529 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1491 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1488 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | 1487 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1458 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1482 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | 1472 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), Kimi K3: 77.7 (#14)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | 1483 |
Long Context Too close to call
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), Kimi K3: 45.8 (#29)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1494 |
Writing & Preference Kimi K3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), Kimi K3: 76.6 (#4)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1476 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1454 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | 2082 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | 1339 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1488 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Kimi K3?
Kimi K3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 59.5 to 50.3 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K3?
Kimi K3 is cheaper. It lists at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K3 better for coding?
Kimi K3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 61.0 versus 46.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Kimi K3 does, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Kimi K3 share?
44 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Kimi K3 has 53.