Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3-235B-A22B
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Kimi K2.6
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.
Qwen3-235B-A22B
69.0Alibaba (Qwen) · Jul 2025
The most popular open general-purpose Qwen: 235B MoE with hybrid thinking, a staple of the 2025 open-source ecosystem.
The verdict
These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-235B-A22B works out roughly 4.4x cheaper per blended million tokens.
Specs & pricing
| Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3-235B-A22B | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | 69.0 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.95 | $0.22 |
| Output price / 1M | $4 | $0.88 |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 33K |
| Open weights | yes (Modified MIT) | yes (Apache 2.0) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Feb 2026 | Apr 2025 |
| Released | Apr 2026 | Jul 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $15.50 | $3.52 |
* 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, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- These two models don't yet share verified results on the benchmarks we track, so judge them on specs, pricing and intended use. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-235B-A22B works out roughly 4.4x cheaper per blended million tokens.
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95/$4 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-235B-A22B costs $0.22/$0.88. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $15.50 versus $3.52.
- Which model is better for coding, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3-235B-A22B?
- We don't yet track SWE-bench Verified results for both models; check their individual pages for coding-related scores.