Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) vs Kimi K3 (Low)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) by Anthropic or Kimi K3 (Low) 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 (Low) scores 5.8 points higher (30.1 vs 24.3) but costs 1.8× as much to run the benchmark ($1190 vs $653; both premium class). Pick Kimi K3 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Claude Sonnet 5 (Low).
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) | Kimi K3 (Low) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 24.3 | 30.1 | +23.9% Kimi K3 (Low) is 23.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $652.70 | $1,190.42 | +82.4% Kimi K3 (Low) is 82.4% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.46s | 56.42s | +566.9% Kimi K3 (Low) is 566.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $3.00 / $15.0 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Kimi K3 (Low) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Low): 23.9% more intelligence, 82.4% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 566.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- Kimi K3 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Low)Kimi K3 (Low)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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