Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Kimi K2.6
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Google · May 2026
Google's I/O 2026 headliner: near-Pro intelligence at Flash speed, 78.8% on SWE-bench Verified with full multimodal input.
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 Gemini 3.5 Flash. Kimi K2.6 is about 2.0x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). Gemini 3.5 Flash 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
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | Kimi K2.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | — |
| Input price / 1M | $1.5 | $0.95 |
| Output price / 1M | $9 | $4 |
| Context window | 1M | 262K |
| Max output | 66K | 262K |
| Open weights | no | yes (Modified MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image, audio, video | text, image |
| Knowledge cutoff | Feb 2026 | Feb 2026 |
| Released | May 2026 | Apr 2026 |
| Example monthly cost* | $28.50 | $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, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Kimi K2.6?
- Kimi K2.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Gemini 3.5 Flash. Kimi K2.6 is about 2.0x cheaper per blended million tokens (3:1 input:output mix). Gemini 3.5 Flash 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, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Kimi K2.6?
- Gemini 3.5 Flash costs $1.5/$9 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 $28.50 versus $15.50.
- Which model is better for coding, Gemini 3.5 Flash or Kimi K2.6?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Kimi K2.6 scores ~82.5% versus 78.8% for Gemini 3.5 Flash, making Kimi K2.6 the stronger pick for coding agents.