The Known Good Updated 25 Jul 2026
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
#7 of 61
93based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#112 of 316
66.0
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)
Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — Alibaba
Quality
#9 of 61
90based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#182 of 316
44.6
Output tokens per second
Price
#246 of 340
$2.34
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.04 · Out $6.24
Cache hit price
#113 of 206
$0.13
per 1M tokens (−88%)
Context
#130 of 345
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 93 and Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores 90 — a 2-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 $1.16 per 1M tokens for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and $2.34 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 2.0× cheaper.

Throughput is 66 tokens per second for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 and 45 for Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview, with time to first token at 1.1s and 1.4s. 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. 22 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 26 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Known Good Index 93 based on 3 of 6 evaluations 90 based on 3 of 6 evaluations
Blended $/1M $1.16 $2.34
Output tok/s 66 45
Context window 262k 262k
Providers 21 1
Jump to section

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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Known Good Index 93 90
Mathematics Index 96 91
Science Index 95 93
Agentic Index 87 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 = Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond91 / 89
MATH / AIME96 / 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 1,456
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461 1,460
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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Input $/1M $0.65 $1.04
Output $/1M $2.72 $6.24
Blended $/1M $1.16 $2.34
Cache read $/1M $0.109 $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 262k 66k
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 K2.6Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Output tokens/s 66 45
Time to first token 1.1s 1.4s
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 Qwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview blendedQwen: Qwen3.6 Max Preview tok/s
CoreWeave $1.34 239
Together $2.02 166
Decart $1.35 129
Fireworks $1.71 111
ModelRun $1.38 110
DeepInfra $1.44 65
Crusoe $1.40 63
Venice $1.44 63
Cloudflare $1.71 56
DigitalOcean $1.37 52
Chutes $1.37 47
SiliconFlow $1.43 47
Phala $1.97 46
Parasail $1.44 45
Inceptron $1.30 37
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 37
Novita $1.45 36
StreamLake $1.54 36
Baidu · first party $1.16 33
AtlasCloud $1.71 32
BaseTen $1.71
Alibaba · first party $2.34 2

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 →