Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Kimi K3 (Max)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Kimi K3 (Max) by Kimi? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Kimi K3 (Max) scores 2.8 points higher (43.6 vs 40.8) but costs 5.9× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $622; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Kimi K3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 40.8, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when 40.8 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | Kimi K3 (Max) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 43.6 | +6.9% Kimi K3 (Max) is 6.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $3,658.07 | +487.8% Kimi K3 (Max) is 5.9× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.74s | 58.57s | +920.4% Kimi K3 (Max) is 920.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $3.00 / $15.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Kimi K3 (Max) vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 6.9% more intelligence, 487.8% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 920.4% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Kimi K3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)Kimi K3 (Max)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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