Kimi K2.6 vs Mistral Large 3 2512
Kimi K2.6 leads Mistral Large 3 2512 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 27.0 to 9.3, and Mistral Large 3 2512 costs 2.7x less per output token ($1.50 vs $4.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 25 benchmarks have a result for both.
Kimi K2.6 or Mistral Large 3 2512: which to pick
Only Kimi K2.6 has a coding score, 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; Mistral Large 3 2512 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Mistral Large 3 2512 for output tokens 2.7x cheaper ($1.50 vs $4.00 per million) and work measured by CaseLaw (Vals AI), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 25
- Kimi K2.6 only
- 84
- Mistral Large 3 2512 only
- 3
- Like-for-like categories
- 7 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.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Kimi K2.6 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 27.0 against 9.3.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 20.5 against 1.0.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 89.1% against 68.4%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
No call
Only Mistral Large 3 2512 has a AIME result, 42.9%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 87.6% against 79.8%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 1269 against 1162.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 262K tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mistral Large 3 2512
Kimi K2.6 $0.0029, Mistral Large 3 2512 $0.0013 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 $0.35, Mistral Large 3 2512 $0.77.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- Kimi K2.6 52.1 from 3 benchmarks, Mistral Large 3 2512 not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Coding, 33.9 points apart on average over 4 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- AA Coding Index: Kimi K2.6 61.8 against Mistral Large 3 2512 20.1, 41.7 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Kimi K2.6 $4.00 against Mistral Large 3 2512 $1.50 per million output tokens, 2.7x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 262K tokens.
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.
| Category | Kimi K2.6 | Bars | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 4 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 5 | 1 | ||
| Web design | 8 | 0 | ||
| General | 3 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 24 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index40
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| AA Coding Index | 61.8 | 20.1 | Kimi K2.6 |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 86.8% | 55.3% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 76.2% | 41.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 37.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 27.8% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 0.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 53.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| SciCode | 51.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 43.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| WeirdML | 55.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 1092.7 | 264.7 | Kimi K2.6 |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1489 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1484 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1505 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1485 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1521 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 22 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 27.0 | 9.3 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.9 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 20.5 | 1.0 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1268 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1155 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1157 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1160 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1120 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1141 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1184 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1128 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1276 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 44.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 12.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 15.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 57.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 95.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 4.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $6,205 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 24 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 89.1% | 68.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 86.3% | 66.2% | Kimi K2.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 91.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 37.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 90.8% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 20.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 18.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| EBR-bench | 2.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1470 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1491 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1471 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1298 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1310 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 42.9% | Only Mistral Large 3 2512 measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.4% | Only Mistral Large 3 2512 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 96.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 57.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 25.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| ProofBench | 16.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1474 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1480 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index51
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 87.6% | 79.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 84.7% | 79.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 61.2% | 61.4% | Mistral Large 3 2512 |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 66.7% | 61.0% | Kimi K2.6 |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.7% | 73.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 65.8% | 52.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 82.2% | Only Mistral Large 3 2512 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 40.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1468 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1457 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1462 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1445 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index80
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1269 | 1162 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1266 | 1102 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1251 | 1080 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1249 | 1136 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1268 | 1100 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1272 | 1142 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1181 | 993 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1165 | 1069 | Kimi K2.6 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 56.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 50.2% | 24.6% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 78.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 56.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| IFBench | 76.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 81.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| DTBench | 90.9% | 65.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| LMCA | 37.3% | 16.7% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Furniture assembly | 21.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| ExploitBench | 18.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1455 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1451 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1434 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1282 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1460 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1446 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1520 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1451 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1443 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1427 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1471 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1464 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1446 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1438 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1453 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1468 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1439 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1428 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1287 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1346 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1291 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1280 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1273 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LMArena Document | 1451 | Not measured | Only 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
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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
Mistral Large 3 2512 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Mistral Large 3 2512 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Mistral Large 3 2512 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.
| Specification | MoonshotAI Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Large 3 2512 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | Mistral AI |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | April 20, 2026 | December 1, 2025 |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.95 | $0.50 |
| Output $/Mtok | $4.00 | $1.50 |
| Coding index | 52.1 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 3 | 1 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.35 | $0.77 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Kimi K2.6 better than Mistral Large 3 2512 for coding?
Only Kimi K2.6 has a coding score, 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; Mistral Large 3 2512 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Mistral Large 3 2512 for output tokens 2.7x cheaper ($1.50 vs $4.00 per million) and work measured by CaseLaw (Vals AI), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Mistral Large 3 2512?
Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95 per million input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens; Mistral Large 3 2512 costs $0.50 and $1.50. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Kimi K2.6 costs $0.35 and Mistral Large 3 2512 $0.77.
Which has the bigger context window, Kimi K2.6 or Mistral Large 3 2512?
Neither: both take 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Kimi K2.6 vs Mistral Large 3 2512 comparison based on?
25 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Kimi K2.6's coding index rests on 3 independent benchmarks and Mistral Large 3 2512's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.