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Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Kimi K2.6

Kimi K2.6 leads Claude Sonnet 4.5 on coding, 52.1 to 39.5 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Kimi K2.6 costs 3.8x less per output token ($4.00 vs $15.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 74 benchmarks have a result for both.

Replace Claude Sonnet 4.5 Replace Kimi K2.6
Claude Sonnet 4.5Anthropic
Coding
39.5
Overall
49.5
Output $/M
$15.00
13
Kimi K2.6Moonshot AI
Coding
52.1
Overall
60.5
Output $/M
$4.00
60
vs boards won of 74 shared, 1 tied

Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi K2.6: which to pick

Pick Kimi K2.6 for coding: it scores 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.5 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 for a larger context window (1M against 262K tokens) and work measured by LMArena Text: hard prompts in English or ProofBench, where it leads.

Model AClaude Sonnet 4.5Anthropic39.5/1003 independent benchmarks$1.16 per solved taskModel BKimi K2.6Moonshot AI52.1/1003 independent benchmarks$0.35 per solved task
Shared results
74
Claude Sonnet 4.5 only
21
Kimi K2.6 only
35
Like-for-like categories
8 of 9

Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.

Which one for your work

Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.

At a glance

Coding index
Claude Sonnet 4.5 39.5 from 3 benchmarks, Kimi K2.6 52.1 from 3 benchmarks.
Widest category
Math, 14.2 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3: Claude Sonnet 4.5 23.9% against Kimi K2.6 57.2%, 33.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price
Claude Sonnet 4.5 $15.00 against Kimi K2.6 $4.00 per million output tokens, 3.8x apart.
Context window
Claude Sonnet 4.5 takes 1M tokens, Kimi K2.6 262K.

Benchmark by benchmark

First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.

Boards won, where both have a result
CategoryClaude Sonnet 4.5BarsKimi K2.6Ties
Coding010
Intelligence02
Agentic work05
Reasoning171 tie
Math15
Knowledge210
Web design17
General814
All shared boards13601 tie
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index010
Coding benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
SWE-bench Verified74.8%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
SWE-bench Multilingual67.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena WebDev13941509Kimi K2.6
AA Coding Index52.161.8Kimi K2.6
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)73.0%86.8%Kimi K2.6
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)70.0%76.2%Kimi K2.6
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)22.6%37.9%Kimi K2.6
Code migration (Vals AI)Not measured27.8%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
ProgramBench (Vals AI)Not measured0.0%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI)Not measured53.6%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
SciCodeNot measured51.5%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured43.9%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Terminal-Bench46.5%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
GSO-Bench14.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
WeirdML47.7%55.9%Kimi K2.6
Cybench60.0%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
ALE-BenchNot measured1092.7Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: coding14881489Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: software and IT14731484Kimi K2.6
LMArena WebDev: React13861505Kimi K2.6
LMArena WebDev: HTML13991485Kimi K2.6
LMArena WebDev: from an imageNot measured1521Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index02
Intelligence benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
AA Intelligence Index20.727.0Kimi K2.6
Epoch Capabilities Index146.7150.9Kimi K2.6
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index05
Agentic work benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
AA Agentic Index15.820.5Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: agents building web apps10601268Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps10501155Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps11371156Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: agents building Android appsNot measured1161Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building Godot gamesNot measured1120Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building gamesNot measured1141Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: HTML slidesNot measured1135Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: PowerPoint slidesNot measured1103Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: spreadsheetsNot measured1276Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Finance Agent (Vals AI)Not measured44.9%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI)Not measured12.4%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Legal Research Bench (Vals AI)Not measured15.9%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI)Not measured57.9%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
τ²-Bench TelecomNot measured95.9%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
METR time horizons67.4%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Remote Labor Index2.1%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
GDPval42.5%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
OSWorld 2.0Not measured4.6%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
DeepResearch Bench52.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
OSWorld62.9%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Vending-Bench 2$3,839$6,205Kimi K2.6
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL)73.2%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 18 boards here
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index17
Reasoning benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
GPQA Diamond81.6%89.1%Kimi K2.6
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)79.3%86.3%Kimi K2.6
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured91.1%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured37.5%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)82.3%90.8%Kimi K2.6
ARC-AGI63.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
ARC-AGI-213.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
SimpleBench54.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Chess puzzles10.0%20.0%Kimi K2.6
Mystery game puzzles17.0%18.0%Kimi K2.6
EBR-bench2.4%2.4%Tie
VPCT39.8%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts14621470Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: expert14831491Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English14711471Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Vision: diagramsNot measured1298Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: homeworkNot measured1310Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index15
Math benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
AIME88.2%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MGSM (Vals AI)94.3%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
OTIS Mock AIME77.8%96.1%Kimi K2.6
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 323.9%57.2%Kimi K2.6
FrontierMath, tier 42.4%25.6%Kimi K2.6
ProofBench19.0%16.0%Claude Sonnet 4.5
MATH level 597.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
LMArena Text: math14491474Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: mathematical work14621480Kimi K2.6
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index210
Knowledge benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
MMLU Pro87.4%87.6%Kimi K2.6
LegalBench (Vals AI)84.1%84.7%Kimi K2.6
CaseLaw (Vals AI)62.2%61.2%Claude Sonnet 4.5
CorpFin (Vals AI)62.0%66.7%Kimi K2.6
TaxEval (Vals AI)73.3%74.7%Kimi K2.6
MortgageTax (Vals AI)64.0%65.8%Kimi K2.6
MedQA (Vals AI)94.7%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
MedCode (Vals AI)44.1%40.1%Claude Sonnet 4.5
SimpleQA Verified30.7%34.9%Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: science14481468Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare14441457Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: legal and government14511462Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: business and finance14401445Kimi K2.6
FACTS Benchmark Suite40.6%Not measuredOnly Claude Sonnet 4.5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index17
Web design benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
Design Arena: websites11891268Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: UI components11701263Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: game dev11661250Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: data viz11671249Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: 3D11571267Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: all code categories11821271Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: SVG11151181Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: ASCII art12051165Claude Sonnet 4.5
Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index814
General benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI)Not measured56.6%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
SAGE (Vals AI)36.1%50.2%Kimi K2.6
MedScribe (Vals AI)84.5%78.2%Claude Sonnet 4.5
Vals Multimodal IndexNot measured56.4%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
IFBenchNot measured76.0%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)Not measured81.0%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
DTBench83.2%90.9%Kimi K2.6
LMCA38.8%37.3%Claude Sonnet 4.5
Furniture assemblyNot measured21.7%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
ExploitBenchNot measured18.4%Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text14381455Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: instruction following14591451Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: creative writing14421434Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena VisionNot measured1282Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: English14501460Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: non-English14251446Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Chinese14601520Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: German14271451Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Japanese13901443Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Korean14021427Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: French14591471Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Spanish14581464Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Russian14371446Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Polish14231438Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: multi-turn14651453Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: longer queries14751468Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: writing and language14421439Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Text: entertainment and media14281428Claude Sonnet 4.5
LMArena Vision: EnglishNot measured1287Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: ChineseNot measured1346Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: reading textNot measured1291Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: humorNot measured1280Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: creative writingNot measured1273Only Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Document14501451Kimi K2.6
Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
Image generation benchmarks for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5Kimi K2.6Leader
Neither model has a result on 5 boards here

What each workload costs

Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.

Chat turn

1K input + 500 output tokens

Claude Sonnet 4.5$0.011Fits in one request
Kimi K2.6$0.0029Fits in one request

Kimi K2.6 costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

Claude Sonnet 4.5$0.195Fits in one request
Kimi K2.6$0.059Fits in one request

Kimi K2.6 costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

Claude Sonnet 4.5$0.750Fits in one request
Kimi K2.6$0.230Fits in one request

Kimi K2.6 costs less

Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.

Specification differences

The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.

Specifications of Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Kimi K2.6
SpecificationAnthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5MoonshotAI Kimi K2.6
MakerAnthropicMoonshot AI
WeightsNo public weights listedOpen weights
ReleasedSeptember 29, 2025April 20, 2026
Context window1M262K
Input $/Mtok$3.00$0.95
Output $/Mtok$15.00$4.00
Coding index39.552.1
Independent measurements behind it33
Cost per solved task$1.16$0.35
SourceOpenRouter listingOpenRouter listing

Questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than Kimi K2.6 for coding?

Pick Kimi K2.6 for coding: it scores 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.5 for Claude Sonnet 4.5. Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 for a larger context window (1M against 262K tokens) and work measured by LMArena Text: hard prompts in English or ProofBench, where it leads.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95 and $4.00. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $1.16 and Kimi K2.6 $0.35.

Which has the bigger context window, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 4.5, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks is the Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Kimi K2.6 comparison based on?

74 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Claude Sonnet 4.5's coding index rests on 3 independent benchmarks and Kimi K2.6's on 3. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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