# Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) vs MiniMax-M3

> MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.8 to 41.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/kimi-k2-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) scores higher in 4 categories and MiniMax-M3 in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where MiniMax-M3 leads 58.4 to 37.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleBench: 26.3% for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and 45.8% for MiniMax-M3.
- MiniMax-M3 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.57 / $2.30 for Kimi K2 (Jul 2025).
- MiniMax-M3 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.

## Snapshot

| | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 41.2 | 43.8 |
| Rank | 140 | 85 |
| Context | 262K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.57 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $2.30 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.4 (#102)
- MiniMax-M3: 41.8 (#118)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1399 | 1469 |
| ALE-Bench | 597.5 | 640.02 |
| FrontierCode | — | 14.7% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 63.4% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 59.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1482 |
| SciCode | — | 47.1% |
| GSO | 4.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 42.8% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 32.4 (#64)
- MiniMax-M3: 22.6 (#130)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 35.7% | — |
| APEX-Agents | — | 37.7% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 59.1% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | — | 4.6% |
| GBAEval | — | 0.9% |
| METR Time Horizons | 59.2% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 2,158 |

## Reasoning

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 23.3 (#179)
- MiniMax-M3: 30.1 (#87)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | 26.3% | 45.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1384 | 1447 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.01 | 146.95 |
| ForecastBench | 60.2 | 61.4 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 64.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 65.1% |
| CritPt | — | 3.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 14% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 8% |
| DTBench | — | 78.9% |
| LMCA | — | 33.7% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 55% |

## Math

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 42.7 (#83)
- MiniMax-M3: 40.0 (#95)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1397 | 1429 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 71.1% |
| ProofBench | — | 18% |
| Omni-MATH | 65.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 21.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |

## Knowledge

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 37.3 (#157)
- MiniMax-M3: 58.4 (#35)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1365 | 1461 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 90.9% |
| MMLU-Pro | 81.9% | — |
| Confabulations | 20.4% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 17.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65.3% | — |

## Multimodal

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): —
- MiniMax-M3: 40.2 (#51)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1253 |
| LMArena Document | — | 1435 |

## Multilingual

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 49.6 (#130)
- MiniMax-M3: 53.0 (#75)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1372 | 1420 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1415 | 1463 |
| LMArena French | 1379 | 1447 |
| LMArena German | 1387 | 1426 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1349 | 1381 |
| LMArena Korean | 1325 | 1372 |
| LMArena Russian | 1385 | 1428 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1386 | 1432 |

## Instruction Following

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 71.1 (#156)
- MiniMax-M3: 75.5 (#62)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1348 | 1433 |
| IFEval | 85% | — |

## Long Context

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 41.2 (#145)
- MiniMax-M3: 44.2 (#72)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1353 | 1445 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 66.7% | — |
| CL-bench | 17.6% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Kimi K2 (Jul 2025): 62.3 (#78)
- MiniMax-M3: 62.1 (#83)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1380 | 1433 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1350 | 1404 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1371 | 1442 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 85.6% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1666 | — |
| WildBench | 86.2% | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1150 |

## FAQ

### Is Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) better than MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.8 to 41.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) or MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 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-M3 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (42.4 vs 41.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M3 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) and MiniMax-M3 share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2 (Jul 2025) has 42 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M3 has 41.