Kimi K3 vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Kimi K3 leads Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 43.6 to 7.3, and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs 20.0x less per output token ($0.75 vs $15.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 4 benchmarks have a result for both.
Kimi K3 or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: which to pick
Only Kimi K3 has a coding score, 62.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for output tokens 20.0x cheaper ($0.75 vs $15.00 per million).
- Shared results
- 4
- Kimi K3 only
- 113
- Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct only
- 7
- Like-for-like categories
- 3 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 K3 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Kimi K3
Kimi K3 leads, 43.6 against 7.3.
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
No call
Only Kimi K3 has a Vals Index result, 53.0%.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Kimi K3
Kimi K3 takes 1.05M tokens against 262K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Kimi K3 $0.011, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct $0.0006 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, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- General, 55.3 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- Long context reasoning (AA-LCR): Kimi K3 88.7% against Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 33.3%, 55.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Kimi K3 $15.00 against Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct $0.75 per million output tokens, 20.0x apart.
- Context window
- Kimi K3 takes 1.05M tokens, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 262K.
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 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 4 | 0 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index26 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | 59.3% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | 1655 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| 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% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 85.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| 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 |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 35.3% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| SciCode | 59.5% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 3.8% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| 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 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | 1644 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | 1579 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 43.6 | 7.3 | Kimi K3 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 157.9 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index25 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | 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 | 1269 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | 1250 | 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 | 1256 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | 1273 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | 1058 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench research | 79.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench browser | 16.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | 42.8% | 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% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 46.1% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark (Vals AI) | 12.9% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| 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 |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 29.2% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 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 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 16 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | 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% | 57.9% | Kimi K3 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 46.9% | 3.8% | 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 | 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 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 30.7 | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 30.7% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| 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 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | 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 |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 74.9% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 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 6 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index8 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1335 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1344 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1359 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1351 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1388 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1360 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | 1302 | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| LiveBench design | 77.2% | 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 index10
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vals Index | 53.0% | Not measured | Only Kimi K3 measured |
| 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) | 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 |
| IFBench | Not measured | 39.9% | Only Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 88.7% | 33.3% | 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 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 17 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | 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 VL 8B Instruct costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct 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 | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | Qwen |
| Weights | Open weights | Open weights |
| Released | July 16, 2026 | October 14, 2025 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $3.00 | $0.25 |
| Output $/Mtok | $15.00 | $0.75 |
| Coding index | 62.3 | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 6 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | $0.81 | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Kimi K3 better than Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for coding?
Only Kimi K3 has a coding score, 62.3 on the Vibe Coding Index; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for output tokens 20.0x cheaper ($0.75 vs $15.00 per million).
Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Kimi K3 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs $0.25 and $0.75. Cost per solved task is known for Kimi K3 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Kimi K3 or Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Kimi K3, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks is the Kimi K3 vs Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct comparison based on?
4 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Kimi K3's coding index rests on 6 independent benchmarks and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.