Kimi K2 Thinking vs Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Compare Kimi K2 Thinking and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct, both from Moonshot AI, context windows of 262K vs 1.0M, tested across 34 shared challenges. Updated April 2026.
Which is better, Kimi K2 Thinking or Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct?
Kimi K2 Thinking and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct are both competitive models. Kimi K2 Thinking costs $0.6/M input tokens vs $0.3/M for Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct. Context windows: 262K vs 1049K tokens. Compare their real outputs side by side below.
Key Differences Between Kimi K2 Thinking and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Kimi K2 Thinking is made by moonshotai while Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is from moonshotai. Kimi K2 Thinking has a 262K token context window compared to Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct's 1049K. On pricing, Kimi K2 Thinking costs $0.6/M input tokens vs $0.3/M for Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct.
No community votes yet. On paper, these are closely matched - try both with your actual task to see which fits your workflow.
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is 4.2x cheaper per token — worth considering if cost matters.
Style Comparison
Kimi K2 Thinking uses 1.9x more lists
vsAsk them anything yourself
Some models write identically. You are paying for the brand.
178 models fingerprinted across 32 writing dimensions. Free research.
185x
price gap between models that write identically
178
models
12
clone pairs
32
dimensions
279 AI models invented the same fake scientist.
We read every word. 250 models. 2.14 million words. This is what we found.
