Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Kimi K2.6
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Anthropic · Apr 2026
Anthropic's mid-tier workhorse: near-Opus capability at $3/$15, and the leader on the Finance Agent benchmark.
Moonshot AI · Apr 2026
Moonshot's multimodal flagship that ties GPT-5.5 on several coding evaluations at a fraction of the price, with open weights.
The verdict
Kimi K2.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Claude Sonnet 4.6. On price the gap is dramatic: Kimi K2.6 works out roughly 3.5x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.6 also takes 1M of context versus 262K for Kimi K2.6. And Kimi K2.6 is open-weights (Modified MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Benchmark head-to-head 0–1
Specs & pricing
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Kimi K2.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | — |
| Input price / 1M | $3 | $0.95 |
| Output price / 1M | $15 | $4 |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 64K | 262K |
| Open weights | no | yes (Modified MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text, image |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jan 2026 | Feb 2026 |
| Released | Apr 2026 | Apr 2026 |
| Example monthly cost* | $52.50 | $15.50 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K2.6?
- Kimi K2.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Claude Sonnet 4.6. On price the gap is dramatic: Kimi K2.6 works out roughly 3.5x cheaper per blended million tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.6 also takes 1M of context versus 262K for Kimi K2.6. And Kimi K2.6 is open-weights (Modified MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K2.6?
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs $3/$15 per million input/output tokens, while Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95/$4. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $52.50 versus $15.50.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K2.6?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Kimi K2.6 scores ~82.5% versus ~79.6% for Claude Sonnet 4.6, making Kimi K2.6 the stronger pick for coding agents.