Claude Opus 5 vs Kimi K3

  • Claude Opus 5 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1508 against 1475.
  • Kimi K3 is cheaper: $0.24 / $11 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5.
  • On the 11 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 5 wins 11 and Kimi K3 wins 0.
LMArena text rating over time
14601468147514831490Jul 16Aug 9Sep 3Sep 27Oct 22
LatestKimi K3 1475

Side by side

Models (2/6)
  • Claude Opus 5
  • Kimi K3
BenchmarkClaude Opus 5Kimi K3
The model
LabAnthropicMoonshot AI
Released2026-07-242026-07-16
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M1M
Input, per 1M tokens$5$0.24
Output, per 1M tokens$25$10.80
LMArena, people’s votes
LMArena TextMillions of people compare two anonymous models side by side and vote for the better answer1508#4 of 3511475#25 of 351
LMArena WebDevPeople ask two anonymous models to build the same web app, try both and vote for the better one1691#9 of 1241655#17 of 124
LMArena VisionSide-by-side votes on prompts that include an image1320#3 of 146—
LMArena CodingLMArena’s text votes on prompts that ask for code1533#4 of 3461508#16 of 346
LMArena MathLMArena’s text votes on math prompts1533#2 of 3391493#20 of 339
LMArena Creative writingLMArena’s text votes on stories, poems and other creative writing1495#5 of 3491456#28 of 349
LMArena Hard promptsLMArena’s text votes on the hardest prompts1527#4 of 3511495#17 of 351
LMArena Instruction followingLMArena’s text votes on prompts with specific instructions to follow1518#5 of 3511485#16 of 351
Vals AI, overall
Vals IndexVals AI’s headline score—52.95%#20 of 27
Vals AI, coding
Terminal-Bench 4.0Frontier-difficulty tasks an agent completes in a real terminal53.53%#9 of 5517.17%#34 of 55
SWE-benchReal GitHub issues from open-source projects97.00%#1 of 8593.40%#8 of 85
Vibe Code BenchBuilding complete web apps from a plain-language brief, graded on whether the app works88.40%#9 of 11584.97%#16 of 115
Code MigrationRewriting working programs in a new language, graded on whether the new program still passes its tests—28.59%#23 of 28
LiveCodeBenchFresh competitive programming problems, collected after models’ training cut-offs to avoid contamination89.03%#4 of 14387.19%#18 of 143
Vals AI, finance
Finance AgentThe core tasks of a financial analyst, done as an agent with research tools—60.01%#21 of 31
Finance IndexVals AI’s composite of finance tasks—57.95%#11 of 31
Tax Agent BenchAgentic research into US corporate tax questions45.55%#4 of 7633.37%#15 of 76
Vals AI, law
Legal IndexVals AI’s composite of legal tasks—71.72%#10 of 28
Legal Research BenchAgentic US legal research55.29%#2 of 8546.15%#16 of 85
Vals AI, medicine
MedCodeAssigning the right medical billing codes from clinical notes63.57%#1 of 10749.36%#23 of 107
Vals AI, reasoning
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level questions in biology, physics and chemistry that experts answer well and search does not93.43%#8 of 13892.93%#12 of 138
MMLU-ProHarder, reasoning-focused multiple choice across 14 subjects, from law to engineering91.59%#2 of 13887.97%#22 of 138
MMMUCollege-level questions that need both an image and text89.88%#2 of 9388.15%#11 of 93
Terminal-Bench ScienceExpert-written scientific research workflows, run by an agent in a terminal27.14%#9 of 421.43%#38 of 42

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Questions

Which is better, Claude Opus 5 or Kimi K3?

Claude Opus 5 rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1508 against 1475. Kimi K3 is cheaper: $0.24 / $11 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5. On the 11 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Claude Opus 5 wins 11 and Kimi K3 wins 0.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5 or Kimi K3?

Kimi K3 is cheaper: $0.24 / $11 per million input / output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 5.

Sources

Every number on this page comes from these sources; models without a published number show none. Download the data. Cite as “Nexus Explorer, nexus.inc/models”.