# Kimi K2.5 vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview

> Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 48.1 on the Noometry Index. Kimi K2.5 costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/kimi-k2-5-vs-qwen3-6-max-preview
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 26

## Summary

- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2.5 scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 5 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 41.7 to 31.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleQA Verified: 34.3% for Kimi K2.5 and 52% for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Kimi K2.5 is cheaper at $0.45 / $2.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Kimi K2.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 48.1 | 51.5 |
| Rank | 57 | 43 |
| Context | 262K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.45 | $1.30 |
| Output $/M | $2.25 | $7.80 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Kimi K2.5: 48.8 (#53)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.7 (#54)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.8% | 76.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1437 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1474 | 1471 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 70.8% | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 67.3% | — |
| SciCode | 49% | — |
| WeirdML | 45.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 821.65 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Kimi K2.5: 34.2 (#48)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | 1,198 | 4,254 |
| Terminal-Bench | 43.2% | — |
| OSWorld | 63.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Kimi K2.5: 31.2 (#80)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 41.7 (#53)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 46.8% | 63% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 69.9% | 74.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | 20% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1453 | 1457 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 148.03 | 149.24 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 11.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 78.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 65.3% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 3.4% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 69.4% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| DTBench | — | 87.2% |
| LMCA | — | 42.5% |

## Math

- Kimi K2.5: 51.8 (#53)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.1 (#46)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 92.2% | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1470 | 1465 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 27.9% | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | 4.2% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 62.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- Kimi K2.5: 53.6 (#56)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#39)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.6% | 87.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.3% | 52% |
| LMArena Expert | 1466 | 1478 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 24.4% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.2% | — |

## Multimodal

- Kimi K2.5: 41.1 (#39)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1269 | — |
| LMArena Document | 1430 | — |

## Multilingual

- Kimi K2.5: 53.9 (#53)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.2 (#48)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1433 | 1437 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1495 | 1487 |
| LMArena French | 1454 | 1449 |
| LMArena Russian | 1435 | 1445 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1450 | 1454 |
| LMArena German | 1441 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1421 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1410 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Kimi K2.5: 75.3 (#64)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.7 (#55)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1431 | 1438 |

## Long Context

- Kimi K2.5: 52.1 (#7)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#61)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1445 | 1457 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 86.1% | — |
| CL-bench | 19.3% | — |
| CL-bench Life | 13.2% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Kimi K2.5: 65.1 (#53)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 63.8 (#60)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1445 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1423 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1444 | 1456 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1579 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Kimi K2.5 better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 48.1 on the Noometry Index. Kimi K2.5 costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Kimi K2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.45 per million input tokens and $2.25 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.

### Is Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (48.8 vs 48.7); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Kimi K2.5 and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2.5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.