Model comparison
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) vs Step 3
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher in 7 categories and Step 3 in 1 category; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads 62.3 to 54.3.
Side by side
| Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 40.5 |
| Released | 2025-07-12 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | — |
| Max output | 262K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.57 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $2.30 | — |
| Results tracked | 42 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.4 (#102), Step 3: 40.1 (#147)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1399 | 1367 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 63.4% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 59.1% | — |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 42.8% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 597.5 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 32.4 (#64), Step 3: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 35.7% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 59.1% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 59.2% | — |
Reasoning Step 3 leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 23.3 (#179), Step 3: 28.4 (#105)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 64.4% | 62.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1384 | 1355 |
| SimpleBench | 26.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.01 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | — |
Math Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.7 (#83), Step 3: 37.6 (#148)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1397 | 1366 |
| Omni-MATH | 65.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 21.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |
Knowledge Too close to call
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 37.3 (#157), Step 3: 36.8 (#164)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1365 | 1333 |
| MMLU-Pro | 81.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 20.4% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 17.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65.3% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): —, Step 3: 35.5 (#86)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1177 |
Multilingual Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 49.6 (#130), Step 3: 46.3 (#159)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1415 | 1397 |
| LMArena German | 1387 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1325 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1385 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1386 | 1371 |
| LMArena French | 1379 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1349 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 71.1 (#156), Step 3: 70.4 (#164)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1348 | 1332 |
| IFEval | 85% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 41.2 (#145), Step 3: 40.3 (#157)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1353 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |
| CL-bench | 17.6% | — |
Writing & Preference Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 62.3 (#78), Step 3: 54.3 (#151)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1380 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1350 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1371 | 1341 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 85.6% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1666 | — |
| WildBench | 86.2% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) better than Step 3?
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (41.2 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) or Step 3 better for coding?
Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and Step 3 share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has 42 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.