Kimi K3 vs MiniMax M3.1 Flash
Kimi K3 leads MiniMax M3.1 Flash on coding, 62.3 to 59.0 on the Vibe Coding Index, and MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs 25.0x less per output token ($0.60 vs $15.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 20 benchmarks have a result for both.
Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3.1 Flash: which to pick
Pick Kimi K3 for coding: it scores 62.3 on the Vibe Coding Index against 59.0 for MiniMax M3.1 Flash.
Pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash for output tokens 25.0x cheaper ($0.60 vs $15.00 per million) and work measured by LiveBench coding or Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 20
- Kimi K3 only
- 102
- MiniMax M3.1 Flash only
- 0
- Like-for-like categories
- 6 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 K3
Kimi K3 scores 62.3 against 59.0.
6 and 4 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Kimi K3
Kimi K3 leads, 43.6 against 42.7.
Same board, both measured
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a AA Agentic Index result, 50.0.
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, 1335.
Directional only
General
Vals Index
MiniMax M3.1 Flash
MiniMax M3.1 Flash leads, 53.8% against 53.0%.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Kimi K3
Kimi K3 takes 1.05M tokens against 1M.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
MiniMax M3.1 Flash
Kimi K3 $0.011, MiniMax M3.1 Flash $0.0004 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 62.3 from 6 benchmarks, MiniMax M3.1 Flash 59.0 from 4 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Agentic work, 18.2 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- LiveBench browser: Kimi K3 16.0% against MiniMax M3.1 Flash 92.0%, 76.0 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Kimi K3 $15.00 against MiniMax M3.1 Flash $0.60 per million output tokens, 25.0x apart.
- Context window
- Kimi K3 takes 1.05M tokens, MiniMax M3.1 Flash 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 K3 | Bars | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 5 | 2 | ||
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 5 | 1 | ||
| Reasoning | 1 | 1 | ||
| Web design | 1 | 0 | ||
| General | 2 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 15 | 5 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index52
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 59.3% | 83.9% | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| LMArena WebDev | 1655 | 1587 | Kimi K3 |
| AA Coding Index | 76.2 | 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% | 25.3% | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 85.0% | 73.9% | 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% | 53.4% | Kimi K3 |
| 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 |
| ALE-Bench | 1524.5 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1508 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1499 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | 1670 | 1609 | Kimi K3 |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1644 | 1529 | Kimi K3 |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1579 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SWE-Bench Pro V2 | 97.7% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 18 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 43.6 | 42.7 | Kimi K3 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 157.9 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index51
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | 50.0 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | 1295 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | 1315 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | 1268 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1252 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Godot games | 1223 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | 1252 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | 1196 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1245 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1096 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench research | 79.0% | 72.7% | Kimi K3 |
| LiveBench browser | 16.0% | 92.0% | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| LiveBench long agentic | 42.8% | 34.7% | Kimi K3 |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 53.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 33.4% | 32.1% | Kimi K3 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 46.1% | 34.1% | Kimi K3 |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 12.9% | 7.5% | Kimi K3 |
| 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% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| PostTrainBench | 32.0% | 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 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 92.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | 90.7% | 82.9% | Kimi K3 |
| 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% | 48.0% | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| 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 | 1495 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1520 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1496 | 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 8 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 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 | 1494 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1505 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| MathArena | 48.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 7 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 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 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 50.6% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | 1508 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1489 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1503 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1470 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1335 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1340 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1360 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1352 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1387 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1360 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1301 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench design | 77.2% | 74.0% | Kimi K3 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index21
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 53.0% | 53.8% | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| LiveBench data analysis | 78.7% | 71.4% | Kimi K3 |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 68.2% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | 52.8% | 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% | 79.7% | Kimi K3 |
| 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 | 1476 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1485 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1457 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1481 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1466 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1529 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1490 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1494 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1460 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1492 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1472 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1485 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1458 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1489 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1494 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1471 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1453 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1339 | 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 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 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
MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
MiniMax M3.1 Flash 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 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | MiniMax |
| Weights | Open weights | No public weights listed |
| Released | July 16, 2026 | October 19, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $3.00 | $0.15 |
| Output $/Mtok | $15.00 | $0.60 |
| Coding index | 62.3 | 59.0 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 4 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.81 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Kimi K3 better than MiniMax M3.1 Flash for coding?
Pick Kimi K3 for coding: it scores 62.3 on the Vibe Coding Index against 59.0 for MiniMax M3.1 Flash. Pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash for output tokens 25.0x cheaper ($0.60 vs $15.00 per million) and work measured by LiveBench coding or Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3.1 Flash?
Kimi K3 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs $0.15 and $0.60. Cost per solved task is known for Kimi K3 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3.1 Flash?
Kimi K3, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.
How many benchmarks is the Kimi K3 vs MiniMax M3.1 Flash comparison based on?
20 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Kimi K3's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and MiniMax M3.1 Flash's on 4. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.