The Known Good Updated 9 Sep 2026 Subscribe
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano ·Moonshot AI vs OpenAI

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — head-to-head comparison

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano profile All comparisons
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#8 of 65
92based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#158 of 341
51.7
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)
OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — OpenAI
Quality
#33 of 65
68based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#56 of 341
95.7
Output tokens per second
Price
#62 of 450
$0.14
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.05 · Out $0.40
Cache hit price
#22 of 344
$0.005
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#193 of 487
400k
tokens (~600 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 92 and OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano scores 68 — a 25-point lead for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. They share 2 published evaluations, with MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 2 and OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.71 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $0.14 for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano — OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano is about 12.5× cheaper.

Throughput is 52 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 96 for OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano, with time to first token at 1.4s and 2.6s. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 accepts 262k tokens of context against 400k.

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano is proprietary. 25 tracked hosts serve one or both.

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

At a glance
MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Known Good Index 92 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 68 based on 4 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.71 $0.14
Output tok/s 52 96
Context window 262k 400k
Providers 23 2
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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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Known Good Index 92 68
Mathematics Index 89
Openness Index 60 5
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 · marker = OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 69
Mock AIME 2024–2596 / 81

Right-hand figures read MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 / OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 leads on 2 of 2, OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano on 0.

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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Text Arena 1,455
Text Arena (style controlled) 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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Input $/1M $0.95 $0.05
Output $/1M $4.00 $0.40
Blended $/1M $1.71 $0.14
Cache read $/1M $0.160 $0.005
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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Context window 262k 400k
Max output tokens 236k 128k
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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano
Output tokens/s 52 96
Time to first token 1.4s 2.6s
The Known Good

Providers

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

25 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s OpenAI: GPT-5 Nano blendedOpenAI: GPT-5 Nano tok/s
CoreWeave $1.34 152
Together $2.02 119
ModelRun $1.38 103
Decart $1.06 88
BaseTen $1.71 83
Parasail $1.44 82
Inceptron $1.05 74
Fireworks $1.71 54
Crusoe $1.40 52
Baidu · first party $1.04 39
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 36
Chutes $1.28 34
DigitalOcean $1.71 33
Sail Research $1.75 33
StreamLake $1.08 31
AtlasCloud $1.71 30
Cloudflare $1.71 29
Novita $1.45 29
SiliconFlow $1.43 28
Venice $1.44 22
DeepInfra $1.44 21
Phala $1.97 20
GMICloud $1.54 8
OpenAI · first party $0.07 94
Azure · first party $0.14 67

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 →