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Kimi K2.6 vs MiniMax M2

Kimi K2.6 leads MiniMax M2 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 27.0 to 18.6, and MiniMax M2 costs 3.9x less per output token ($1.02 vs $4.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 43 benchmarks have a result for both.

Replace Kimi K2.6 Replace MiniMax M2
Kimi K2.6Moonshot AI
Coding
52.1
Overall
60.5
Output $/M
$4.00
43
MiniMax M2MiniMax
Coding
No data
Overall
No data
Output $/M
$1.02
0
vs boards won of 43 shared

Kimi K2.6 or MiniMax M2: which to pick

Only Kimi K2.6 has a coding score, 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; MiniMax M2 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.

Pick MiniMax M2 for output tokens 3.9x cheaper ($1.02 vs $4.00 per million).

Model AKimi K2.6Moonshot AI52.1/1003 independent benchmarks$0.35 per solved taskModel BMiniMax M2MiniMaxNot benchmarked1 independent benchmark$0.702 per solved task
Shared results
43
Kimi K2.6 only
66
MiniMax M2 only
7
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
Kimi K2.6 52.1 from 3 benchmarks, MiniMax M2 not benchmarked.
Widest category
Agentic work, 23.4 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap
Vending-Bench 2: Kimi K2.6 $6,205 against MiniMax M2 $161, 37.8 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price
Kimi K2.6 $4.00 against MiniMax M2 $1.02 per million output tokens, 3.9x apart.
Context window
Kimi K2.6 takes 262K tokens, MiniMax M2 205K.

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
CategoryKimi K2.6BarsMiniMax M2Ties
Coding50
Intelligence10
Agentic work20
Reasoning50
Math20
Knowledge40
Web design70
General170
All shared boards430
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index50
Coding benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
SWE-bench VerifiedNot measured61.0%Only MiniMax M2 measured
LMArena WebDev15091297Kimi K2.6
AA Coding Index61.8Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)86.8%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)76.2%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)37.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Code migration (Vals AI)27.8%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
ProgramBench (Vals AI)0.0%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI)53.6%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured82.6%Only MiniMax M2 measured
SciCode51.5%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)43.9%25.8%Kimi K2.6
Terminal-BenchNot measured30.0%Only MiniMax M2 measured
WeirdML55.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
ALE-Bench1092.7Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: coding14891371Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: software and IT14841373Kimi K2.6
LMArena WebDev: React1505Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena WebDev: HTML14851306Kimi K2.6
LMArena WebDev: from an image1521Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
Intelligence benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
AA Intelligence Index27.018.6Kimi K2.6
Epoch Capabilities Index150.9Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
Agentic work benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
AA Agentic Index20.5Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building web apps1268Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps1155Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building mobile apps1156Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building Android apps1161Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building Godot games1120Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: agents building games1141Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: HTML slides1135Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: PowerPoint slides1103Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Design Arena: spreadsheets1276Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Finance Agent (Vals AI)44.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI)12.4%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Legal Research Bench (Vals AI)15.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI)57.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
τ²-Bench Telecom95.9%86.8%Kimi K2.6
OSWorld 2.04.6%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Vending-Bench 2$6,205$161Kimi K2.6
Neither model has a result on the other 24 boards here
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index50
Reasoning benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
GPQA Diamond89.1%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)86.3%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)91.1%77.7%Kimi K2.6
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)37.5%13.7%Kimi K2.6
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)90.8%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Chess puzzles20.0%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Mystery game puzzles18.0%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
EBR-bench2.4%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts14701357Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: expert14911338Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English14711376Kimi K2.6
LMArena Vision: diagrams1298Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: homework1310Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Kagi LLM BenchmarkNot measured57.8%Only MiniMax M2 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
Math benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
AA Math IndexNot measured78.3Only MiniMax M2 measured
AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured78.3%Only MiniMax M2 measured
OTIS Mock AIME96.1%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 357.2%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
FrontierMath, tier 425.6%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
ProofBench16.0%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: math14741351Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: mathematical work14801368Kimi K2.6
Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40
Knowledge benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
MMLU Pro87.6%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LegalBench (Vals AI)84.7%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
CaseLaw (Vals AI)61.2%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
CorpFin (Vals AI)66.7%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
TaxEval (Vals AI)74.7%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
MortgageTax (Vals AI)65.8%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
MedCode (Vals AI)40.1%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run)Not measured82.0%Only MiniMax M2 measured
SimpleQA Verified34.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: science14681348Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare14571367Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: legal and government14621349Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: business and finance14451336Kimi K2.6
Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index70
Web design benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
Design Arena: websites12681143Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: UI components12631137Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: game dev12501118Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: data viz12491140Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: 3D12671098Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: all code categories12711135Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: SVG11811100Kimi K2.6
Design Arena: ASCII art1165Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index170
General benchmarks for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI)56.6%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
SAGE (Vals AI)50.2%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
MedScribe (Vals AI)78.2%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Vals Multimodal Index56.4%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
IFBench76.0%72.3%Kimi K2.6
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)81.0%64.3%Kimi K2.6
DTBench90.9%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMCA37.3%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
Furniture assembly21.7%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
ExploitBench18.4%Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text14551340Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: instruction following14511329Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: creative writing14341286Kimi K2.6
LMArena Vision1282Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: English14601364Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: non-English14461313Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Chinese15201366Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: German14511357Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Japanese1443Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: Korean1427Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Text: French14711336Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Spanish14641326Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Russian14461330Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: Polish14381312Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: multi-turn14531361Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: longer queries14681331Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: writing and language14391295Kimi K2.6
LMArena Text: entertainment and media14281298Kimi K2.6
LMArena Vision: English1287Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: Chinese1346Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: reading text1291Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: humor1280Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Vision: creative writing1273Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
LMArena Document1451Not measuredOnly Kimi K2.6 measured
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 Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
BenchmarkKimi K2.6MiniMax M2Leader
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

Kimi K2.6$0.0029Fits in one request
MiniMax M2$0.0008Fits in one request

MiniMax M2 costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

Kimi K2.6$0.059Fits in one request
MiniMax M2$0.016Fits in one request

MiniMax M2 costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

Kimi K2.6$0.230Fits in one request
MiniMax M2$0.061Exceeds the context window

MiniMax M2 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 Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M2
SpecificationMoonshotAI Kimi K2.6MiniMax M2
MakerMoonshot AIMiniMax
WeightsOpen weightsOpen weights
ReleasedApril 20, 2026October 23, 2025
Context window262K205K
Input $/Mtok$0.95$0.255
Output $/Mtok$4.00$1.02
Coding index52.1Not benchmarked
Independent measurements behind it31
Cost per solved task$0.35$0.702
SourceOpenRouter listingOpenRouter listing

Questions

Is Kimi K2.6 better than MiniMax M2 for coding?

Only Kimi K2.6 has a coding score, 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; MiniMax M2 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick MiniMax M2 for output tokens 3.9x cheaper ($1.02 vs $4.00 per million).

Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or MiniMax M2?

Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95 per million input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens; MiniMax M2 costs $0.255 and $1.02. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Kimi K2.6 costs $0.35 and MiniMax M2 $0.702.

Which has the bigger context window, Kimi K2.6 or MiniMax M2?

Kimi K2.6, with 262K tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks is the Kimi K2.6 vs MiniMax M2 comparison based on?

43 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Kimi K2.6's coding index rests on 3 independent benchmarks and MiniMax M2's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

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