Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) vs Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning)

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) by Kimi? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 53.40
Total cost: $13129

KimiKimi K2.6 (Reasoning)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 27.00
Total cost: $1528

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 26.4 points higher (53.4 vs 27.0) but costs 8.6× as much to run the benchmark ($13129 vs $1528; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) when you need intelligence above 27.0, and Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) when 27.0 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)	Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	53.4	27.0	−49.4% Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is 49.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$13,128.86	$1,528.20	−88.4% Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is 88.4% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	201.72s	65.20s	−67.7% Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is 67.7% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.95 / $4.00
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image, Video

Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): 49.4% less intelligence, 88.4% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 67.7% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback): what beats it Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Max, Default Fallback)Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/kimi-k2-6 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1/kimi-k2-6?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill