Kimi K3 vs Muse Ember
Muse Ember leads Kimi K3 on coding, 64.9 to 61.4 on the Vibe Coding Index, and Muse Ember costs 30.0x less per output token ($0.50 vs $15.00 per million). Updated November 14, 2026; 15 benchmarks have a result for both.
Kimi K3 or Muse Ember: which to pick
Pick Muse Ember for coding: it scores 64.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 61.4 for Kimi K3, though on 3 benchmarks against 6.
Pick Kimi K3 for work measured by LMArena WebDev or Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 15
- Kimi K3 only
- 118
- Muse Ember only
- 0
- Like-for-like categories
- 5 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
Muse Ember
Muse Ember scores 64.9 against 61.4.
6 and 3 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 17.4.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a AA Agentic Index result, 29.3.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a GPQA Diamond result, 92.9%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a MMLU Pro result, 88.0%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1336.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
Muse Ember
Muse Ember leads, 60.5% against 53.0%.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 1.05M tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Muse Ember
Kimi K3 $0.011, Muse Ember $0.0003 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Kimi K3 has the number, $0.81.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Kimi K3 61.4 from 6 benchmarks, Muse Ember 64.9 from 3 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 11.8 points apart on average over 7 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI): Kimi K3 17.2% against Muse Ember 39.4%, 29.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Kimi K3 $15.00 against Muse Ember $0.50 per million output tokens, 30.0x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 1.05M 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 K3 | Bars | Muse Ember | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 4 | 3 | ||
| Agentic work | 0 | 4 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 0 | 1 | ||
| General | 0 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 6 | 9 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index43
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 53.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1658 | 1609 | Kimi K3 |
| AA Coding Index | 72.0 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | 87.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | 93.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 17.2% | 39.4% | Muse Ember |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 85.0% | 83.7% | Kimi K3 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 16.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | 2.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 48.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | 80.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal (Vals AI) | 44.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | 18.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 75.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SciCode | 59.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 (Artificial Analysis run) | 12.6% | 40.9% | Muse Ember |
| FrontierCode 2.0 | 10.9% | 27.2% | Muse Ember |
| FrontierCode | 44.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| FrontierSWE | 25.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| WeirdML | 82.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MirrorCode | 54.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| ALE-Bench | 1524.5 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1506 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1497 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1672 | 1616 | Kimi K3 |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1640 | 1621 | Kimi K3 |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1586 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SWE-Bench Pro V2 | 97.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| GameBench 2 | 49.8 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | 22.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 22 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 17.4 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.6 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index04
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 29.3 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1273 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1290 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1253 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1256 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1200 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1198 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1151 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1223 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1068 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench research | 79.8% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 75.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 36.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 53.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 33.4% | 38.2% | Muse Ember |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 46.1% | 49.0% | Muse Ember |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 12.9% | 25.0% | Muse Ember |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 66.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| BioMysteryBench (Vals AI) | 72.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | 1.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Time Horizon Index (Vals AI) | 10.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| APEX-Agents | 47.8% | 64.3% | Muse Ember |
| PostTrainBench | 31.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | $5,165 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MCP Atlas | 82.3% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 76.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| τ³-Banking | 37.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 92.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 90.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | 88.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 93.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 46.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| HLE-Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 26.9% | 25.1% | Kimi K3 |
| CritPt v2, hard subset (Artificial Analysis run) | 40.5% | 39.0% | Kimi K3 |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | 93.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| ARC-AGI | 94.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SimpleBench | 60.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Chess puzzles | 37.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | 26.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1494 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1515 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1493 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Scale run) | 22.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | 97.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | 72.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | 39.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| ProofBench | 87.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1496 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1507 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MathArena | 42.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | 88.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | 86.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | 71.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | 75.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | 66.3% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | 49.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| AA-Omniscience | -1.7 | 7.7 | Muse Ember |
| SimpleQA Verified | 50.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1502 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1488 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1498 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1469 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1336 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1340 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1353 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1350 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1364 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1351 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1296 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench design | 72.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 53.0% | 60.5% | Muse Ember |
| LiveBench data analysis | 78.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 68.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 86.8% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | 88.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | 73.4% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 88.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| GDPval-AA | 1542 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| DTBench | 91.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMCA | 52.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 95.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Furniture assembly | 34.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text | 1475 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1484 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1453 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1479 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1465 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1527 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1483 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1495 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1444 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1482 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1477 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1481 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1472 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1489 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1490 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1468 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1450 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1319 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Muse Ember | 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
Muse Ember costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Muse Ember costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Muse Ember 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 K3 | Meta Muse Ember |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | Meta |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 16, 2026 | November 9, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 1.05M |
| Input $/Mtok | $3.00 | $0.10 |
| Output $/Mtok | $15.00 | $0.50 |
| Coding index | 61.4 | 64.9 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 3 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.81 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Kimi K3 better than Muse Ember for coding?
Pick Muse Ember for coding: it scores 64.9 on the Vibe Coding Index against 61.4 for Kimi K3, though on 3 benchmarks against 6. Pick Kimi K3 for work measured by LMArena WebDev or Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Muse Ember?
Kimi K3 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; Muse Ember costs $0.10 and $0.50. Cost per solved task is known for Kimi K3 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Kimi K3 or Muse Ember?
Neither: both take 1.05M tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Kimi K3 vs Muse Ember comparison based on?
15 benchmarks have a result for both models as of November 14, 2026. Kimi K3's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Muse Ember's on 3. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.