The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs OpenAI: o3 Mini ·Moonshot AI vs OpenAI

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs OpenAI: o3 Mini — head-to-head comparison

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile OpenAI: o3 Mini profile All comparisons
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#7 of 61
93based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#112 of 316
65.7
Output tokens per second
Price
#211 of 340
$1.16
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.65 · Out $2.72
Cache hit price
#99 of 206
$0.11
per 1M tokens (−83%)
Context
#172 of 345
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
OpenAI: o3 Mini — OpenAI
Quality
#15 of 61
82based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#22 of 316
131.8
Output tokens per second
Price
#236 of 340
$1.93
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.10 · Out $4.40
Cache hit price
#189 of 206
$0.55
per 1M tokens (−50%)
Context
#205 of 345
200k
tokens (~300 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 93 and OpenAI: o3 Mini scores 82 — a 11-point lead for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. They share 2 published evaluations, with MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 2 and OpenAI: o3 Mini ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.16 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $1.93 for OpenAI: o3 Mini — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 1.7× cheaper.

Throughput is 66 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 132 for OpenAI: o3 Mini, with time to first token at 1.1s and 3.2s. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 accepts 262k tokens of context against 200k.

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); OpenAI: o3 Mini is proprietary. 22 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 25 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: o3 Mini
Known Good Index 93 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 82 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.93
Output tok/s 66 132
Context window 262k 200k
Providers 21 1
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

IndicesComponents
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: o3 Mini
Known Good Index 93 82
Mathematics Index 96 88
Science Index 95 78
Reasoning Index 85
Agentic Index 87
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: o3 Mini · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 77
MATH / AIME96 / 77

Right-hand figures read MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 / OpenAI: o3 Mini. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 leads on 2 of 2, OpenAI: o3 Mini 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: o3 Mini
Text Arena 1,455 1,319
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461 1,348
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Per token typeCache discount
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: o3 Mini
Input $/1M $0.65 $1.10
Output $/1M $2.72 $4.40
Blended $/1M $1.16 $1.93
Cache read $/1M $0.109 $0.550
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: o3 Mini
Context window 262k 200k
Max output tokens 262k 100k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6OpenAI: o3 Mini
Output tokens/s 66 132
Time to first token 1.1s 3.2s
The Known Good

Providers

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

22 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s OpenAI: o3 Mini blendedOpenAI: o3 Mini tok/s
CoreWeave $1.34 156
Together $2.02 130
Decart $1.35 123
Fireworks $1.71 111
ModelRun $1.38 99
Crusoe $1.40 69
DeepInfra $1.44 57
Cloudflare $1.71 56
Venice $1.44 54
DigitalOcean $1.37 53
SiliconFlow $1.43 50
Chutes $1.37 49
AtlasCloud $1.71 44
StreamLake $1.54 44
Novita $1.45 43
Parasail $1.44 42
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 40
Inceptron $1.30 39
Baidu · first party $1.16 32
BaseTen $1.71
Phala $1.97
OpenAI · first party $1.93 127

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 →