Model comparison
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) vs Qwen3.6 Flash
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.2 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 2.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2 (Jul 2025)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.6 Flash in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 Flash leads 29.0 to 23.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleBench: 26.3% for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and 35.2% for Qwen3.6 Flash.
- Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.19 / $1.13 per million input/output tokens, against $0.57 / $2.30 for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025).
- Qwen3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 38.8 |
| Released | 2025-07-12 | 2026-04-27 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 1M |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.57 | $0.19 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.30 | $1.13 |
| Results tracked | 42 | 13 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.4 (#102), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 597.5 | 326.4 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 63.4% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 59.1% | — |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 42.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1399 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 32.4 (#64), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 35.7% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 59.1% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 59.2% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 23.3 (#179), Qwen3.6 Flash: 29.0 (#96)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 26.3% | 35.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.01 | 143.26 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 64.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1384 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 18% |
| DTBench | — | 77.1% |
| LMCA | — | 31% |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | — |
Math Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.7 (#83), Qwen3.6 Flash: 39.0 (#117)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 21.4% | 10.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | 0% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 22.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 84.4% |
| Omni-MATH | 65.4% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1397 | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 37.3 (#157), Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.1 (#100)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 83.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.9% |
| MMLU-Pro | 81.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 20.4% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 17.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1365 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 49.6 (#130), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1415 | — |
| LMArena French | 1379 | — |
| LMArena German | 1387 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1349 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1325 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1385 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1386 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 71.1 (#156), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 85% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1348 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 41.2 (#145), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |
| CL-bench | 17.6% | — |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1353 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 62.3 (#78), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1350 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 85.6% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1666 | — |
| WildBench | 86.2% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1371 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) better than Qwen3.6 Flash?
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.2 to 38.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.6 Flash costs 2.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2 (Jul 2025)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) or Qwen3.6 Flash?
Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.19 per million input tokens and $1.13 per million output tokens; Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) lists at $0.57 and $2.30.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Flash does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Qwen3.6 Flash share?
5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has 42 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.