Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) vs Kimi K2.7 Code
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) by Anthropic or Kimi K2.7 Code by Kimi? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-09.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Ma… scores 12.1 points higher (38.4 vs 26.3) but costs 7.0× as much to run the benchmark ($6998 vs $993; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Ma… when you need intelligence above 26.3, and Kimi K2.7 Code when 26.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort) | Kimi K2.7 Code | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 38.4 | 26.3 | −31.5% Kimi K2.7 Code is 31.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,998.25 | $992.88 | −85.8% Kimi K2.7 Code is 85.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 184.77s | 41.22s | −77.7% Kimi K2.7 Code is 77.7% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.95 / $4.00 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Kimi K2.7 Code vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort): 31.5% less intelligence, 85.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 77.7% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Astra (max) scores 52.80 for $5324.
- Kimi K2.7 Code is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Claude Sonnet 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort)Kimi K2.7 CodeToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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