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Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs Kimi K2.6

Data verified

Head-to-head evidence from 24 shared benchmark results across 5 categories. Overall scores shown here use the public BenchAlign v5 ranking lane.

65.32/100
Margin
8.5pts
← winning
Kimi K2.6
Moonshot AI
56.79/100
4 category wins0 category wins

Public leaderboard positions: Claude Sonnet 5 #29 (Estimated); Kimi K2.6 #74 (Estimated). Intervals and evidence labels describe ranking uncertainty, not a guarantee for a specific workload.

Evidence parity. Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K2.6 share 24 comparable benchmark results. 4 of 8 categories are comparable. 12 results are unique to Claude Sonnet 5; 27 to Kimi K2.6.

Updated July 23, 2026
Shared results
24
Claude Sonnet 5 only
12
Kimi K2.6 only
27
Comparable categories
4 / 8

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Kimi K2.6 only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill.

Confidence note. This is a partial-evidence comparison with 24 shared benchmark results across 5 evidence categories; 4 of 8 categories currently have scoreable aggregates for both models. Treat the verdict as directional until coverage is more balanced.

Why this result

Claude Sonnet 5 is clearly ahead on the BenchAlign aggregate, 65.32 to 56.79. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude Sonnet 5's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 57.4 against 42.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is HLE, 57.4% to 34.7%.

Claude Sonnet 5 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $2.00 input / $10.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.95 input / $4.00 output per 1M tokens for Kimi K2.6. That is roughly 2.5x on output cost alone. Claude Sonnet 5 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Kimi K2.6.

Category breakdown

Exact category averages are shown below. Not measured means BenchLM does not have enough sourced public coverage for that model and category.

Category scores and score margins for Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K2.6
CategoryClaude Sonnet 5ΔKimi K2.6
KnowledgeClaude Sonnet 557.4Margin← 15.2Kimi K2.642.2
CodingClaude Sonnet 576.7Margin← 12.3Kimi K2.664.4
MultimodalClaude Sonnet 588.3Margin← 8.5Kimi K2.679.8
AgenticClaude Sonnet 581.9Margin← 8.4Kimi K2.673.5
MathClaude Sonnet 5Not measuredMarginNo overlapKimi K2.667.1

Decisive benchmark drivers

The largest measured benchmark gaps in this matchup, with exact reported values.

More
A · Claude Sonnet 5B · Kimi K2.6

  1. HLE

    Knowledge
    Source ↗
    A 57.4%B 34.7%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 22.7
    HLE: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 57.4%; Kimi K2.6 scored 34.7%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  2. Terminal-Bench 2.0

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 80.4%B 66.7%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 13.7
    Terminal-Bench 2.0: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 80.4%; Kimi K2.6 scored 66.7%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  3. OSWorld-Verified

    Agentic
    Source ↗
    A 81.2%B 73.1%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 8.1
    OSWorld-Verified: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 81.2%; Kimi K2.6 scored 73.1%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  4. CharXiv

    Multimodal
    Source ↗
    A 88.3%B 80.4%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 7.9
    CharXiv: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 88.3%; Kimi K2.6 scored 80.4%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

  5. SWE-bench Verified

    Coding
    Source ↗
    A 85.2%B 80.2%
    Winner: Claude Sonnet 5Δ 5
    SWE-bench Verified: Claude Sonnet 5 scored 85.2%; Kimi K2.6 scored 80.2%. Claude Sonnet 5 wins this benchmark.

Operational comparison

Runtime and commercial metrics are compared only when both models have a complete sourced value.

MetricClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Comparison
Input / output priceUSD per 1M tokensClaude Sonnet 5$2 input / $10 outputKimi K2.6$0.95 input / $4 outputKimi K2.6 has the lower combined listed price.
Generation speedtokens per secondClaude Sonnet 5Not availableKimi K2.6Not availableA complete speed comparison is not available.
First-answer latencyseconds to first tokenClaude Sonnet 5Not availableKimi K2.6Not availableA complete latency comparison is not available.
Context windowmaximum listed tokensClaude Sonnet 51MKimi K2.6256KClaude Sonnet 5 lists the larger context window.

Benchmark Deep Dive

AgenticClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 80.4%66.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
BrowseCompSource 84.7%83.2%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
HLE w/ toolsSource 57.4%—Not comparable
OSWorld-VerifiedSource 81.2%73.1%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
GDPval-AASource 16071189Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA Agentic IndexSource 46.7%30.3%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
GDPval-AASource 55.4%34.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA BriefcaseSource 1388—Not comparable
AA AutomationBenchSource 39.2%—Not comparable
AA EnterpriseOps-GymSource 44.7%—Not comparable
AA Harvey LABSource 90.1%—Not comparable
AA Tau3 BankingSource 28.2%—Not comparable
aaTerminalBench21Source 80.5%—Not comparable
ToolathlonSource —50%Not comparable
MCP AtlasSource —55.9%Not comparable
Claw-EvalSource —62.3%Not comparable
DeepSearchQASource —92.5%Not comparable
WideResearchSource —80.8%Not comparable
τ²-bench resultsSource —95.9%Not comparable
APEX-Agents-AASource —28.5%Not comparable
Gert LabsSource —56.82%Not comparable
ResearchClawBenchSource —18.0%Not comparable
OSWorld 2.0Source —4.6%Not comparable
terminalBenchHardSource —43.9%Not comparable
CodingClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
SWE-bench VerifiedSource 85.2%80.2%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE-bench ProSource 63.2%58.6%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE MultilingualSource 78.3%76.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
SWE MultimodalSource 28.1%—Not comparable
Terminal-Bench 2.0Source 80.4%66.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
FrontierCode 1.1 MainSource 42.7%—Not comparable
cursorBench32Source 61.5%—Not comparable
AA Coding IndexSource 71.5%61.8%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-SciCodeSource 53.6%53.5%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
LiveCodeBench v6Source —89.6%Not comparable
SciCodeSource —52.2%Not comparable
Vibe Code BenchSource —37.89%Not comparable
cursorBench31Source —47.6%Not comparable
Reasoning
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
AA-LCRSource 70.7%69.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
CritPtSource 16.9%8.0%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
KnowledgeClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
HLESource 57.4%34.7%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
HLE w/o toolsSource 43.2%—Not comparable
Artificial Analysis Intelligence IndexSource 53.4%44.2%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-GPQA DiamondSource 91.1%91.1%Tie
AA-HLESource 39.6%35.9%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience IndexSource 15.3%6.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience AccuracySource 38.3%32.8%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
AA-Omniscience Hallucination RateSource 37.3%39.3%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
GPQASource —90.5%Not comparable
GPQA-DSource —90.5%Not comparable
Math
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
AIME26Source —96.4%Not comparable
HMMT Feb 2026Source —92.7%Not comparable
MMAnswerBenchSource —86.0%Not comparable
FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3)Source —38.966%Not comparable
FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4)Source —14.580%Not comparable
MultimodalClaude Sonnet 5 wins
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
CharXivSource 88.3%80.4%Claude Sonnet 5 leads
CharXiv w/o toolsSource 77%—Not comparable
AA-MMMU-ProSource 77.3%79.4%Kimi K2.6 leads
Design Arena WebsiteSource 13141306Claude Sonnet 5 leads
MMMU-ProSource —79.4%Not comparable
MMMU-Pro w/ PythonSource —80.1%Not comparable
MathVisionSource —87.4%Not comparable
V*Source —96.9%Not comparable
Inst. Following
BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6Result
AA-IFBenchSource —76.0%Not comparable
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead on BenchLM's BenchAlign leaderboard, 65.32 to 56.79. The biggest single separator in this matchup is HLE, where the scores are 57.4% and 34.7%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.4 versus 42.2. Inside this category, HLE is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 76.7 versus 64.4. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.9 versus 73.5. Inside this category, GDPval-AA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 88.3 versus 79.8. Inside this category, Design Arena Website is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Self-host vs API cost

Estimates at 50,000 req/day · 1000 tokens/req average.

Claude Sonnet 5
API / mo$9,000
Self-host / moNot listed
Break-even—
Proprietary model — self-hosting not applicable.
Kimi K2.6
API / mo$3,713
Self-host / mo$18,221
Break-even326M/day
Model the full break-even

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