Qwen3.8-Max vs Kimi K3

  • Qwen3.8-Max rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1484 against 1475.
  • They cost about the same: $2 / $6 and $0.24 / $11 per million input / output tokens.
  • On the 16 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Qwen3.8-Max wins 9 and Kimi K3 wins 7 (Qwen3.8-Max: Vals Index, Terminal-Bench 4.0, Code Migration).
LMArena text rating over time
14601473148514981510Jul 16Aug 9Sep 3Sep 27Oct 22
LatestQwen3.8-Max 1484Kimi K3 1475

Side by side

Models (2/6)
  • Qwen3.8-Max
  • Kimi K3
BenchmarkQwen3.8-MaxKimi K3
The model
LabAlibabaMoonshot AI
Released2026-09-032026-07-16
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M1M
Input, per 1M tokens$2$0.24
Output, per 1M tokens$6$10.80
LMArena, people’s votes
LMArena TextMillions of people compare two anonymous models side by side and vote for the better answer1484#15 of 3511475#25 of 351
LMArena WebDevPeople ask two anonymous models to build the same web app, try both and vote for the better one1673#12 of 1241655#17 of 124
LMArena VisionSide-by-side votes on prompts that include an image1313#10 of 146—
LMArena CodingLMArena’s text votes on prompts that ask for code1503#21 of 3461508#16 of 346
LMArena MathLMArena’s text votes on math prompts1501#15 of 3391493#20 of 339
LMArena Creative writingLMArena’s text votes on stories, poems and other creative writing1477#16 of 3491456#28 of 349
LMArena Hard promptsLMArena’s text votes on the hardest prompts1497#16 of 3511495#17 of 351
LMArena Instruction followingLMArena’s text votes on prompts with specific instructions to follow1481#18 of 3511485#16 of 351
Vals AI, overall
Vals IndexVals AI’s headline score59.05%#11 of 2752.95%#20 of 27
Vals AI, coding
Terminal-Bench 4.0Frontier-difficulty tasks an agent completes in a real terminal34.34%#18 of 5517.17%#34 of 55
SWE-benchReal GitHub issues from open-source projects85.60%#16 of 8593.40%#8 of 85
Vibe Code BenchBuilding complete web apps from a plain-language brief, graded on whether the app works64.70%#49 of 11584.97%#16 of 115
Code MigrationRewriting working programs in a new language, graded on whether the new program still passes its tests57.19%#10 of 2828.59%#23 of 28
LiveCodeBenchFresh competitive programming problems, collected after models’ training cut-offs to avoid contamination87.85%#10 of 14387.19%#18 of 143
Vals AI, finance
Finance AgentThe core tasks of a financial analyst, done as an agent with research tools58.83%#23 of 3160.01%#21 of 31
Finance IndexVals AI’s composite of finance tasks61.66%#5 of 3157.95%#11 of 31
Tax Agent BenchAgentic research into US corporate tax questions32.09%#22 of 7633.37%#15 of 76
Vals AI, law
Legal IndexVals AI’s composite of legal tasks73.90%#5 of 2871.72%#10 of 28
Legal Research BenchAgentic US legal research46.15%#17 of 8546.15%#16 of 85
Vals AI, medicine
MedCodeAssigning the right medical billing codes from clinical notes40.67%#62 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 not93.69%#6 of 13892.93%#12 of 138
MMLU-ProHarder, reasoning-focused multiple choice across 14 subjects, from law to engineering88.60%#18 of 13887.97%#22 of 138
MMMUCollege-level questions that need both an image and text88.03%#12 of 9388.15%#11 of 93
Terminal-Bench ScienceExpert-written scientific research workflows, run by an agent in a terminal12.86%#13 of 421.43%#38 of 42

Add models in the compare tool. Vals Index: Qwen3.8-Max 59.05%, Kimi K3 52.95%.

Questions

Which is better, Qwen3.8-Max or Kimi K3?

Qwen3.8-Max rates higher on LMArena’s text leaderboard: 1484 against 1475. They cost about the same: $2 / $6 and $0.24 / $11 per million input / output tokens. On the 16 Vals AI benchmarks both have taken, Qwen3.8-Max wins 9 and Kimi K3 wins 7 (Qwen3.8-Max: Vals Index, Terminal-Bench 4.0, Code Migration).

Which is cheaper, Qwen3.8-Max or Kimi K3?

They cost about the same: $2 / $6 and $0.24 / $11 per million input / output tokens.

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”.