GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) vs Kimi K3 (Max)

Which is better for the money: GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) by OpenAI 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

OpenAIGPT-5.6 Sol (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 33.50
Total cost: $637

KimiKimi K3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 43.60
Total cost: $3658

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Kimi K3 (Max) scores 10.1 points higher (43.6 vs 33.5) but costs 5.7× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $637; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Kimi K3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 33.5, and GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) when 33.5 is enough.

Metric	GPT-5.6 Sol (Low)	Kimi K3 (Max)	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	33.5	43.6	+30.1% Kimi K3 (Max) is 30.1% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$637.28	$3,658.07	+474.0% Kimi K3 (Max) is 5.7× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	8.26s	56.00s	+578.0% Kimi K3 (Max) is 578.0% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$4.00 / $20.0	$3.00 / $15.0
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Kimi K3 (Max) vs GPT-5.6 Sol (Low): 30.1% more intelligence, 474.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 578.0% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GPT-5.6 Sol (Low): what beats it Kimi K3 (Max): what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GPT-5.6 Sol (Low) 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.

GPT-5.6 Sol (Low)Kimi K3 (Max)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/gpt-5-6-sol-low/kimi-k3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/gpt-5-6-sol-low/kimi-k3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill