The Known Good Updated 9 Sep 2026 Subscribe
DeepSeek: R1 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ·DeepSeek vs Moonshot AI

DeepSeek: R1 vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — head-to-head comparison

DeepSeek: R1 profile MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile All comparisons
DeepSeek: R1 — DeepSeek
Quality
#22 of 65
75based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#311 of 341
19.8
Output tokens per second
Price
#259 of 450
$1.15
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.70 · Out $2.50
Cache hit price
unranked
per 1M tokens
Context
#455 of 487
64k
tokens (~98 pages)
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#8 of 65
92based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#157 of 341
52.4
Output tokens per second
Price
#296 of 450
$1.71
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.95 · Out $4.00
Cache hit price
#227 of 344
$0.16
per 1M tokens (−83%)
Context
#271 of 487
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, DeepSeek: R1 scores 75 and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 92 — a 18-point lead for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. They share 2 published evaluations, with DeepSeek: R1 ahead on 0 and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 2.

Blended pricing is $1.15 per 1M tokens for DeepSeek: R1 and $1.71 for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — DeepSeek: R1 is about 1.5× cheaper.

Throughput is 20 tokens per second for DeepSeek: R1 and 52 for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6, with time to first token at 1.1s and 1.4s. DeepSeek: R1 accepts 64k tokens of context against 262k.

DeepSeek: R1 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 24 tracked hosts serve one or both, and 1 serve both.

Generated from tracked data on 9 Sep 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricDeepSeek: R1MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Known Good Index 75 based on 4 of 7 evaluations 92 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.15 $1.71
Output tok/s 20 52
Context window 64k 262k
Providers 2 23
Jump to section

Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricDeepSeek: R1MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Known Good Index 75 92
Mathematics Index 74
Reasoning Index 77
Openness Index 60 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = DeepSeek: R1 · marker = MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond69 / 91
Mock AIME 2024–2553 / 96

Right-hand figures read DeepSeek: R1 / MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. DeepSeek: R1 leads on 0 of 2, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 on 2.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: R1MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Text Arena 1,372 1,455
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,398 1,461
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricDeepSeek: R1MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Input $/1M $0.70 $0.95
Output $/1M $2.50 $4.00
Blended $/1M $1.15 $1.71
Cache read $/1M $0.160
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricDeepSeek: R1MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Context window 64k 262k
Max output tokens 16k 236k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Mean throughput and time to first token across hosting providers, over successful measurements from the last 48 hours

Throughput and latency

Means across all tracked providers over successful measurements from the last 48 hours, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricDeepSeek: R1MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Output tokens/s 20 52
Time to first token 1.1s 1.4s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

24 hosts · 1 serve both
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider DeepSeek: R1 blendedDeepSeek: R1 tok/s MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s
Novita $1.15 19 $1.45 42
Azure · first party $2.60
CoreWeave $1.34 162
Parasail $1.44 153
BaseTen $1.71 131
Together $2.02 119
ModelRun $1.38 103
Baidu · first party $1.71 69
Inceptron $1.18 56
Decart $1.06 50
Fireworks $1.71 45
DigitalOcean $1.71 44
Phala $1.97 43
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 39
StreamLake $1.08 38
Sail Research $1.75 33
Cloudflare $1.71 31
AtlasCloud $1.71 29
SiliconFlow $1.43 27
Crusoe $1.40 26
Chutes $1.28 21
Venice $1.44 21
DeepInfra $1.44 20
GMICloud $1.54 19

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →