# Codestral vs Kimi K2.6

> Kimi K2.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.7 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-kimi-k2-6
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 1

## Summary

- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Kimi K2.6 in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Kimi K2.6 leads 50.7 to 27.3.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $0.95 / $4 for Kimi K2.6.
- Kimi K2.6 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.
- Kimi K2.6 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Moonshot AI |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 47.7 |
| Rank | 290 | 60 |
| Context | 256K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.95 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $4 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- Kimi K2.6: 50.7 (#43)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 1,093 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1509 |
| SciCode | — | 53.5% |
| WeirdML | — | 55.9% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1488 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 21.9 (#137)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| OSWorld 2.0 | — | 4.6% |
| ExploitBench | — | 18.4% |
| GBAEval | — | 0.9% |
| GDP.pdf | — | 12% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 6,205 |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- Kimi K2.6: 40.5 (#55)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 87.2% |
| CritPt | — | 8% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 26% |
| EBR-Bench | — | 2.4% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1470 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 18% |
| DTBench | — | 90.9% |
| LMCA | — | 37.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 151.05 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 57.0 (#41)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 57.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 25.6% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 72.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 96.1% |
| ProofBench | — | 16% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1475 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 39% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 14.6% |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 54.0 (#54)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 90.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 34.9% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.8% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1491 |

## Multimodal

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 31.6 (#103)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1283 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | — | 3.9% |
| Furniture Assembly | — | 21.7% |
| LMArena Document | — | 1451 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 54.9 (#37)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1446 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1521 |
| LMArena French | — | 1471 |
| LMArena German | — | 1450 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1443 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1427 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1446 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1464 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 76.3 (#43)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1451 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 44.9 (#52)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1468 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Kimi K2.6: 68.5 (#26)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1455 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1434 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1725 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1202 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1453 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Kimi K2.6?

Kimi K2.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.7 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 3.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Kimi K2.6?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Kimi K2.6 lists at $0.95 and $4.

### Is Codestral or Kimi K2.6 better for coding?

Kimi K2.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.7 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Kimi K2.6 does, with 262K tokens against 256K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Kimi K2.6 share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Kimi K2.6 has 51.