# Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) vs MiniMax-M2

> Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.2 to 37.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 1.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2 (Jul 2025)'s lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/kimi-k2-vs-minimax-m2
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher in 9 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) leads 62.3 to 53.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 64.4% for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and 57.8% for MiniMax-M2.
- MiniMax-M2 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.57 / $2.30 for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025).
- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 205K.

## Snapshot

| | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 37.4 |
| Rank | 140 | 204 |
| Context | 262K | 205K |
| Input $/M | $0.57 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $2.30 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.4 (#102)
- MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 63.4% | 61% |
| LMArena Coding | 1399 | 1370 |
| Aider Polyglot | 59.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1297 |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 42.8% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 597.5 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 32.4 (#64)
- MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 35.7% | 30% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 59.1% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 59.2% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 160.6 |

## Reasoning

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 23.3 (#179)
- MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 64.4% | 57.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1384 | 1357 |
| SimpleBench | 26.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 14.8% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.01 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | — |

## Math

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.7 (#83)
- MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1397 | 1352 |
| Omni-MATH | 65.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 21.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |

## Knowledge

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 37.3 (#157)
- MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1365 | 1337 |
| MMLU-Pro | 81.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 20.4% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 17.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65.3% | — |

## Multilingual

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 49.6 (#130)
- MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | 1313 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1415 | 1366 |
| LMArena French | 1379 | 1335 |
| LMArena German | 1387 | 1355 |
| LMArena Russian | 1385 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1386 | 1326 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1349 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1325 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 71.1 (#156)
- MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1348 | 1328 |
| IFEval | 85% | — |

## Long Context

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 41.2 (#145)
- MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1353 | 1331 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |
| CL-bench | 17.6% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 62.3 (#78)
- MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1380 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1350 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1371 | 1361 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 85.6% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1666 | — |
| WildBench | 86.2% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) better than MiniMax-M2?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.2 to 37.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 1.9× 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 MiniMax-M2?

MiniMax-M2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) lists at $0.57 and $2.30.

### Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 39.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) does, with 262K tokens against 205K.

### How many benchmarks do Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and MiniMax-M2 share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has 42 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.