Kimi K3 (Max) vs Qwen3 Coder Next

Which is better for the money: Kimi K3 (Max) by Kimi or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

KimiKimi K3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 43.60
Total cost: $3658

AlibabaQwen3 Coder NextOff the frontier

Intelligence: 9.20
Total cost: $405

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Kimi K3 (Max) scores 34.4 points higher (43.6 vs 9.2) but costs 9.0× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $405; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Kimi K3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.2, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 9.2 is enough.

Metric	Kimi K3 (Max)	Qwen3 Coder Next	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	43.6	9.2	−78.9% Qwen3 Coder Next is 78.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,658.07	$405.10	−88.9% Qwen3 Coder Next is 88.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	63.08s	6.44s	−89.8% Qwen3 Coder Next is 89.8% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$3.00 / $15.0	$0.31 / $1.00
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text

Qwen3 Coder Next vs Kimi K3 (Max): 78.9% less intelligence, 88.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 89.8% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Kimi K3 (Max): what beats it Qwen3 Coder Next: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Kimi K3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.

Kimi K3 (Max)Qwen3 Coder NextToday'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/kimi-k3/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/kimi-k3/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill