Model comparison

Kimi K2.5 Instant vs o4-mini

Kimi K2.5 Instant is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Kimi K2.5 Instant Moonshot AI

42.9

Rank #92 Confirmed

o4-mini OpenAI

41.6

Rank #119 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2.5 Instant scores higher in 5 categories and o4-mini in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Kimi K2.5 Instant leads 60.8 to 54.2.
  • Kimi K2.5 Instant has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Kimi K2.5 Instant and o4-mini specifications
Kimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
ProviderMoonshot AIOpenAI
Noometry Index42.941.6
Released—2025-04-16
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window—200K
Max output—100K
Input $ / M tokens—$1.10
Output $ / M tokens—$4.40
Results tracked1860

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 42.3 (#95), o4-mini: 41.6 (#110)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Coding14831369
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—45%
Aider Polyglot—72%
LMArena WebDev1404—
GSO—3.6%
WeirdML—52.6%
CadEval—62%
ALE-Bench—826.17
AlgoTune—1.72

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Kimi K2.5 Instant: —, o4-mini: 32.3 (#57)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard—53.2%
GDPval—25.3%
METR Time Horizons—63.9%

Reasoning Kimi K2.5 Instant leads

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 28.5 (#88), o4-mini: 24.6 (#143)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Hard Prompts14431351
ARC-AGI-2—6.1%
SimpleBench—38.7%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—67.6%
ARC-AGI-1—58.7%
CritPt—0.6%
Chess Puzzles—26%
EnigmaEval—9.2%
Mystery Game Puzzles—5%
DTBench—77.6%
LMCA—26.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index—145.63
ForecastBench—61.8

Math o4-mini leads

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 36.6 (#105), o4-mini: 40.2 (#79)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Math14431390
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—36.1%
FrontierMath Tier 4—4.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—81.7%
Omni-MATH—72%
MATH Level 5—97.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—24.8%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—6.3%

Knowledge o4-mini leads

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 39.5 (#121), o4-mini: 43.5 (#83)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Expert14381344
GPQA Diamond—79.6%
Humanity's Last Exam—18.1%
SimpleQA Verified—19.6%
MMLU-Pro—82%
Confabulations—15.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—18.6%
GPQA (HELM)—73.5%

Multimodal Too close to call

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 39.5 (#47), o4-mini: 39.5 (#46)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Vision12541194
GeoBench—64%
VPCT—57.5%

Multilingual Kimi K2.5 Instant leads

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 52.2 (#89), o4-mini: 47.2 (#149)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Non-English14061336
LMArena Chinese14501355
LMArena French14031362
LMArena German14131336
LMArena Korean13781313
LMArena Russian14041334
LMArena Spanish14481346
LMArena Japanese—1308

Instruction Following Too close to call

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 75.5 (#61), o4-mini: 75.4 (#63)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Instruction Following14301321
IFEval—92.8%

Long Context o4-mini leads

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 43.8 (#82), o4-mini: 45.5 (#31)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Longer Query14351315
Fiction.LiveBench—77.8%

Writing & Preference Kimi K2.5 Instant leads

Kimi K2.5 Instant: 60.8 (#91), o4-mini: 54.2 (#148)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K2.5 Instanto4-mini
LMArena Text14201353
LMArena Creative Writing13791294
LMArena Multi-Turn14271350
Short-Story Creative Writing—75%
WildBench—85.4%

Frequently asked questions

Is Kimi K2.5 Instant better than o4-mini?

Kimi K2.5 Instant is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 41.6 on the Noometry Index.

Is Kimi K2.5 Instant or o4-mini better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (42.3 vs 41.6); test both on your own repository before choosing.

How many benchmarks do Kimi K2.5 Instant and o4-mini share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2.5 Instant has 18 scored results on Noometry and o4-mini has 60.

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