Model comparison

Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.5 Plus

Kimi K3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 59.5 to 42.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 Plus costs 6.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 10 shared benchmarks.

Kimi K3 Moonshot AI

59.5

Rank #15 Confirmed

Qwen3.5 Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

42.9

Rank #106 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 10 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K3 scores higher in 4 categories and Qwen3.5 Plus in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Kimi K3 leads 63.0 to 32.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is SimpleQA Verified: 50.6% for Kimi K3 and 25.4% for Qwen3.5 Plus.
  • Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $2.40 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Kimi K3.
  • Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 1M.
  • Kimi K3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Kimi K3 and Qwen3.5 Plus specifications
Kimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
ProviderMoonshot AIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index59.542.9
Released2026-07-162026-02-16
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window1.05M1M
Max output1.05M66K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$15$2.40
Results tracked5315

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Kimi K3: 61.0 (#10), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
ALE-Bench1,524621.92
DeepSWE68.5%—
FrontierCode44.2%—
LMArena WebDev1654—
FrontierSWE25.9%—
SciCode59.5%—
WeirdML82.6%—
LMArena Coding1508—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Kimi K3: 41.8 (#20), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
Vending-Bench 25,1650.54
APEX-Agents50.6%—
τ²-bench Banking37.1%—
PostTrainBench32%—
GBAEval48.3%—
GDP.pdf19%—

Reasoning Kimi K3 leads

Kimi K3: 63.0 (#17), Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.8 (#74)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
Chess Puzzles39%22%
Mystery Game Puzzles26%17%
DTBench91.2%80.5%
LMCA52.7%36.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index157.45146.78
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
SimpleBench60.7%—
NYT Connections (extended)93.6%—
ARC-AGI-194.5%—
CritPt23.4%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1496—
Surface Evolver Bench95%—
ForecastBench61.1—

Math Kimi K3 leads

Kimi K3: 74.2 (#16), Qwen3.5 Plus: 49.6 (#61)

Knowledge Kimi K3 leads

Kimi K3: 63.2 (#21), Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#83)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
GPQA Diamond93.1%84.8%
SimpleQA Verified50.6%25.4%
Vectara Hallucination Rate—10.7%
LMArena Expert1521—

Multimodal Not comparable

Kimi K3: 37.8 (#70), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
Blueprint-Bench 229.5%—
Furniture Assembly34.2%—

Multilingual Not comparable

Kimi K3: 56.3 (#21), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Non-English1466—
LMArena Chinese1529—
LMArena French1491—
LMArena German1488—
LMArena Japanese1487—
LMArena Korean1458—
LMArena Russian1482—
LMArena Spanish1472—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Kimi K3: 77.7 (#14), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Instruction Following1483—

Long Context Kimi K3 leads

Kimi K3: 45.8 (#29), Qwen3.5 Plus: 43.0 (#113)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
CL-bench—19.8%
CL-bench Life—12.4%
LMArena Longer Query1494—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Kimi K3: 76.6 (#4), Qwen3.5 Plus: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkKimi K3Qwen3.5 Plus
LMArena Text1476—
LMArena Creative Writing1454—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing2082—
EQ-Bench 41339—
LMArena Multi-Turn1488—

Frequently asked questions

Is Kimi K3 better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

Kimi K3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 59.5 to 42.9 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5 Plus costs 6.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Qwen3.5 Plus?

Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.40 per million output tokens; Kimi K3 lists at $3 and $15.

Which has the bigger context window?

Kimi K3 does, with 1.05M tokens against 1M.

How many benchmarks do Kimi K3 and Qwen3.5 Plus share?

10 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K3 has 53 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.

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