Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) 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.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium)
Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 3.9% less intelligence, 25.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 622.8% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 27.0 | −3.9% Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is 3.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $1,528.20 | +25.5% Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is 25.5% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 9.02s | 65.20s | +622.8% Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning) is 622.8% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.95 / $4.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- 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 Sonnet 5 (Medium)Kimi K2.6 (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/kimi-k2-6 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-sonnet-5-medium/kimi-k2-6?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill