Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3-Coder-Next
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-Coder-Next
Alibaba (Qwen) · Feb 2026
The 2026 open coding specialist: 70.6% SWE-bench Verified under Apache 2.0 from $0.11 per million input tokens.
The verdict
Kimi K2.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Qwen3-Coder-Next. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-Coder-Next works out roughly 6.1x cheaper per blended million tokens.
Benchmark head-to-head 1–0
Specs & pricing
| Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3-Coder-Next | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | — | — |
| Input price / 1M | $0.95 | $0.11 |
| Output price / 1M | $4 | $0.8 |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Open weights | yes (Modified MIT) | yes (Apache 2.0) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Feb 2026 | Nov 2025 |
| Released | Apr 2026 | Feb 2026 |
| Example monthly cost* | $15.50 | $2.30 |
* 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-Coder-Next?
- Kimi K2.6 wins 1 of the 1 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for Qwen3-Coder-Next. On price the gap is dramatic: Qwen3-Coder-Next works out roughly 6.1x cheaper per blended million tokens.
- Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3-Coder-Next?
- Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95/$4 per million input/output tokens, while Qwen3-Coder-Next costs $0.11/$0.8. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $15.50 versus $2.30.
- Which model is better for coding, Kimi K2.6 or Qwen3-Coder-Next?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Kimi K2.6 scores ~82.5% versus 70.6% for Qwen3-Coder-Next, making Kimi K2.6 the stronger pick for coding agents.