Kimi K3vsKimi K2.5 Instant
Kimi K3 leads the overall Podium Score by 11.3 points (83.3 vs 72.0).Category wins: Kimi K3 0 — 0 Kimi K2.5 Instant.Kimi K2.5 Instant is the cheaper pick ($3/M vs $15/M per 1M output tokens). Kimi K2.5 Instant is faster (50 t/s vs 37 t/s).
Key VerdictAggregated 2026 Benchmark Analysis
Kimi K3 is rated higher overall with a Podium Score of 83.3 (vs 72.0 for Kimi K2.5 Instant). Both models show closely matched capabilities across domain benchmarks.
Coding & Engineering
Comparable
Inference Speed
Kimi K2.5 Instant (50 t/s)
Cost Efficiency
Kimi K2.5 Instant ($3/M/M)
| Metric | Kimi K3 | Kimi K2.5 Instant |
|---|---|---|
| Podium Score | 83.3 ▲ | 72.0 |
| Arena Elo | 1485 | — |
| Intelligence Index | 57.0 | — |
| Coding | 61.5 | — |
| Math | 70.9 | — |
| Reasoning | 86.5 | — |
| Agentic | 100.0 | — |
| Knowledge | 19.7 | — |
| Multimodal | 83.5 | — |
| Long-context | 99.2 | — |
| Output speed | 37 t/s | 50 t/s ▲ |
| Output price | $15/M | $3/M ▲ |
| Context window | 1000K ▲ | 128K |
Scores aggregated from five independent leaderboards. See Methodology. More head-to-heads: Kimi K3 vs Claude Mythos · Kimi K3 vs Claude Fable 5 · Kimi K3 vs Claude Opus 5 · Kimi K3 vs GPT-5.6 Sol