The Known Good Updated 4 Sep 2026 Subscribe
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview ·Moonshot AI vs Alibaba

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — head-to-head comparison

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview profile All comparisons
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#8 of 65
92based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#154 of 338
52.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#290 of 442
$1.71
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.95 · Out $4.00
Cache hit price
#211 of 324
$0.16
per 1M tokens (−83%)
Context
#264 of 476
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — Alibaba
Quality
#12 of 65
89based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#176 of 338
46.4
Output tokens per second
Price
#323 of 442
$2.31
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.03 · Out $6.16
Cache hit price
#187 of 324
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−87%)
Context
#220 of 476
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 92 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores 89 — a 3-point lead for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. They share 3 published evaluations, with MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 2 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview ahead on 0.

Blended pricing is $1.71 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $2.31 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 1.3× cheaper.

Throughput is 52 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 46 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview, with time to first token at 1.8s and 1.9s. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 accepts 262k tokens of context against 262k.

MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted); Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview is proprietary. 24 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 4 Sep 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Known Good Index 92 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 89 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.71 $2.31
Output tok/s 52 46
Context window 262k 262k
Providers 23 1
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.

MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Known Good Index 92 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 = Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 87
Mock AIME 2024–2596 / 91
SWE-bench Verified77 / 77

Right-hand figures read MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 / Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview. MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 leads on 2 of 3, Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview 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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Text Arena 1,455 1,446
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461 1,460
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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Input $/1M $0.95 $1.03
Output $/1M $4.00 $6.16
Blended $/1M $1.71 $2.31
Cache read $/1M $0.160 $0.130
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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Context window 262k 262k
Max output tokens 236k 66k
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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Output tokens/s 52 46
Time to first token 1.8s 1.9s
The Known Good

Providers

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

24 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview tok/s
CoreWeave $1.34 140
Together $2.02 119
ModelRun $1.38 103
Parasail $1.44 78
Decart $1.00 65
Phala $1.97 57
DigitalOcean $1.71 41
Cloudflare $1.71 39
Fireworks $1.71 38
Inceptron $1.24 38
Sail Research $1.75 33
StreamLake $1.08 33
Novita $1.45 28
Baidu · first party $1.71 26
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 26
Chutes $1.28 23
SiliconFlow $1.43 23
AtlasCloud $1.71 22
GMICloud $1.54 10
Crusoe $1.40 9
Venice $1.44 8
DeepInfra $1.44 7
BaseTen $1.71
Alibaba · first party $2.31 49

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 →