Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Kimi K2.6 leads Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 on coding, 52.1 to 39.5 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs 2.2x less per output token ($1.80 vs $4.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 21 benchmarks have a result for both.
Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20: which to pick
Pick Kimi K2.6 for coding: it scores 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.5 for Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20.
Pick Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 for output tokens 2.2x cheaper ($1.80 vs $4.00 per million) and a larger context window (1M against 262K tokens).
- Shared results
- 21
- Kimi K2.6 only
- 88
- Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 only
- 4
- 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
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 scores 52.1 against 39.5.
3 and 2 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Kimi K2.6 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 27.0.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Kimi K2.6 has a AA Agentic Index result, 20.5.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 89.1% against 87.4%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
No call
Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 has a AIME result, 86.0%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 leads, 87.6% against 87.2%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Kimi K2.6 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1268.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 takes 1M tokens against 262K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20
Kimi K2.6 $0.0029, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $0.0012 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 $0.35, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $1.35.
Published attempt cost and pass rate
At a glance
- Coding index
- Kimi K2.6 52.1 from 3 benchmarks, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 39.5 from 2 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Agentic work, 38.8 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- MMMU Pro (Vals AI): Kimi K2.6 86.3% against Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 22.8%, 63.5 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Kimi K2.6 $4.00 against Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $1.80 per million output tokens, 2.2x apart.
- Context window
- Kimi K2.6 takes 262K tokens, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 1M.
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 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 4 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 5 | 0 | ||
| Math | 1 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 5 | 1 | ||
| General | 3 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 20 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index40
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| AA Coding Index | 61.8 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 86.8% | 85.3% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 76.2% | 71.2% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 37.9% | 15.7% | Kimi K2.6 |
| 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 | 608.9 | 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 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 27.0 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.9 | 146.2 | Kimi K2.6 |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 20.5 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| 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 | 1156 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1161 | 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 | 1135 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1103 | 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 | $1 | Kimi 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
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 89.1% | 87.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 86.3% | 22.8% | 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% | 84.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Chess puzzles | 20.0% | 8.0% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Mystery game puzzles | 18.0% | 17.0% | Kimi K2.6 |
| 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 | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 86.0% | Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | 96.1% | 86.7% | Kimi K2.6 |
| 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 6 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index51
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 87.6% | 87.2% | Kimi K2.6 |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 84.7% | 85.1% | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | 61.2% | 59.7% | Kimi K2.6 |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 66.7% | 65.3% | Kimi K2.6 |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 74.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 65.8% | 60.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 95.2% | Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 40.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.9% | 25.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| 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 designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1268 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1263 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1250 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1249 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1267 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1271 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1181 | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | 1165 | Not measured | Only 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 index30
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 56.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 50.2% | 30.4% | 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% | 80.5% | Kimi K2.6 |
| LMCA | 37.3% | 36.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| CL-bench | Not measured | 19.8% | Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 21.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| ExploitBench | 18.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K2.6 measured |
| CL-bench Life | Not measured | 12.4% | Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 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 10 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 | 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
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 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 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | Qwen |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | April 20, 2026 | April 27, 2026 |
| Context window | 262K | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.95 | $0.30 |
| Output $/Mtok | $4.00 | $1.80 |
| Coding index | 52.1 | 39.5 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 3 | 2 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.35 | $1.35 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Kimi K2.6 better than Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 for coding?
Pick Kimi K2.6 for coding: it scores 52.1 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.5 for Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20. Pick Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 for output tokens 2.2x cheaper ($1.80 vs $4.00 per million) and a larger context window (1M against 262K tokens).
Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20?
Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95 per million input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 costs $0.30 and $1.80. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, Kimi K2.6 costs $0.35 and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 $1.35.
Which has the bigger context window, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20?
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks is the Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20 comparison based on?
21 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Kimi K2.6's coding index rests on 3 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-04-20's on 2. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.