Model comparison

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 42.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) Moonshot AI

41.2

Rank #140 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Alibaba (Qwen)

42.0

Rank #123 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads 47.8 to 37.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 17.9% for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and 10.5% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
  • Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $0.57 / $2.30 for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025).

Side by side

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B specifications
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
ProviderMoonshot AIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index41.242.0
Released2025-07-122026-02-01
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window262K262K
Max output262K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.57$0.25
Output $ / M tokens$2.30$2
Results tracked4228

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Category by category

Coding Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.4 (#102), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.8 (#251)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Coding13991410
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)63.4%—
Aider Polyglot59.1%—
LMArena WebDev—1254
SciCode—29.3%
GSO4.9%—
WeirdML42.8%—
ALE-Bench597.5—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 32.4 (#64), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
Terminal-Bench35.7%—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard59.1%—
METR Time Horizons59.2%—

Reasoning Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 23.3 (#179), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 24.6 (#161)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Hard Prompts13841400
Epoch Capabilities Index146.01142.52
SimpleBench26.3%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark64.4%—
CritPt—0.6%
Chess Puzzles—10%
DTBench—80%
LMCA—29.5%
ForecastBench60.2—

Math Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.7 (#83), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 39.9 (#97)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Math13971404
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions—56%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—70%
Omni-MATH65.4%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)21.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)0%—

Knowledge Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 37.3 (#157), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.8 (#79)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
Vectara Hallucination Rate17.9%10.5%
LMArena Expert13651408
GPQA Diamond—83.5%
MMLU-Pro81.9%—
Confabulations20.4%—
GPQA (HELM)65.3%—

Multilingual Too close to call

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 49.6 (#130), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.0 (#127)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Non-English13721378
LMArena Chinese14151457
LMArena French13791412
LMArena German13871367
LMArena Japanese13491325
LMArena Korean13251356
LMArena Russian13851376
LMArena Spanish13861392

Instruction Following Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 71.1 (#156), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 72.8 (#128)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following13481379
IFEval85%—

Long Context Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 41.2 (#145), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#127)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query13531389
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%—
CL-bench17.6%—

Writing & Preference Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 62.3 (#78), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 57.9 (#124)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2 (Jul 2025)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
LMArena Text13801395
LMArena Creative Writing13501346
LMArena Multi-Turn13711390
Short-Story Creative Writing85.6%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1666—
WildBench86.2%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 42.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) lists at $0.57 and $2.30.

Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has 42 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.

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