Model comparison
Kimi K2.5 Instant vs Qwen3 Max
Kimi K2.5 Instant and Qwen3 Max score almost the same on the Noometry Index (43.6 vs 43.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2.5 Instant scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3 Max in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 Max leads 48.1 to 40.2.
- Kimi K2.5 Instant has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 43.6 | 43.7 |
| Released | — | 2025-09-23 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | — | 262K |
| Max output | — | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $1.20 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $6 |
| Results tracked | 18 | 33 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 42.6 (#97), Qwen3 Max: 43.0 (#93)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1484 | 1456 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1404 | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 370.45 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Kimi K2.5 Instant: —, Qwen3 Max: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 71.56 |
Reasoning Kimi K2.5 Instant leads
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 29.7 (#90), Qwen3 Max: 22.6 (#190)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1443 | 1448 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 72.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 30.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 4% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.1% |
| LMCA | — | 28.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.38 |
Math Too close to call
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 39.4 (#105), Qwen3 Max: 38.7 (#131)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1442 | 1446 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 73.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.1% |
Knowledge Qwen3 Max leads
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 40.2 (#123), Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#78)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1440 | 1455 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 72.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 48.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 40.2 (#50), Qwen3 Max: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1254 | — |
Multilingual Qwen3 Max leads
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 52.0 (#94), Qwen3 Max: 53.7 (#62)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1406 | 1429 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1449 | 1478 |
| LMArena French | 1403 | 1449 |
| LMArena German | 1413 | 1463 |
| LMArena Korean | 1378 | 1399 |
| LMArena Russian | 1404 | 1428 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1447 | 1462 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1397 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 75.3 (#65), Qwen3 Max: 74.8 (#87)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1430 | 1419 |
Long Context Kimi K2.5 Instant leads
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 43.9 (#83), Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#134)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1438 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | — | 14.5% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3 Max leads
Kimi K2.5 Instant: 60.6 (#95), Qwen3 Max: 62.4 (#76)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.5 Instant | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1420 | 1439 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1381 | 1402 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1427 | 1446 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi K2.5 Instant better than Qwen3 Max?
Kimi K2.5 Instant and Qwen3 Max score almost the same on the Noometry Index (43.6 vs 43.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Is Kimi K2.5 Instant or Qwen3 Max better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (42.6 vs 43.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.
How many benchmarks do Kimi K2.5 Instant and Qwen3 Max share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2.5 Instant has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.