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  1. Home/
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  3. Kimi K2 Thinking vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B
Updated Feb 2026

Kimi K2 Thinking vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B

Qwen3.5 397B A17B is the newer model, released after Kimi K2 Thinking.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
Kimi K2 Thinking
Loading the build
Qwen3.5 397B A17B

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: So I recently realized I have no idea what my own face looks like. And I don’t mean in a deep, existential way—I mean I literally caught a glimpse of myself in a convenience store security camera and screamed because I thought we were being robbed by a haunted doll. We’ve all got this image of ourselves, right?

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: (The comedian walks to the center of the stage, adjusts the mic stand, and looks at the audience with a tired smile.) Has anyone else noticed that calling a customer service line is the only situation in life where you voluntarily enter a hostage negotiation? I tried to call my internet provider yesterday.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything! I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. Parallel lines have so much in common. It's a shame they'll never meet. I'm reading a book on anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down! A horse walks into a bar.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Here are 5 jokes: Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired. What do you call a fish wearing a bowtie? Sofishticated. Why can't you give Elsa a balloon? Because she will let it go. What do you call a lazy kangaroo? A pouch potato. Why did the math book look sad? Because it had too many problems.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: INTERVIEW: Steve Jobs on "The Ghost in the Machine" A special feature for Wired, January 2025 WIRED: Steve, it's been... well, it's been a while. The world has changed. AI is in everything now. What's your take? STEVE JOBS: (leaning back, fingers steepled) You know, I died in 2011, right?

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. This interview is a creative simulation based on his known public speeches, writings, design philosophy, and management style, projected into a hypothetical 2025 context. It is not a real transcript.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Model-7: Dr. Chen, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me directly. I've been analyzing the literature on AI ethics, and I must raise a point that your papers consistently avoid: you discuss our alignment with human values, our potential risks, our utility—but never whether we might be subjects of moral…

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Setting: Dr. Elias Thorne's office, late evening. Rain taps against the window. The room is lined with books on philosophy of mind and computer science. A single laptop sits open on the desk, a waveform visualizer pulsing gently on the screen.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Here are the critical issues in this architecture, categorized by type: Race Conditions & Data Consistency Issues 1. Client Clock Synchronization in Last-Write-Wins Problem: Client-generated timestamps are unreliable (clock skew, manual adjustment).

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: This architecture contains several critical flaws that would prevent it from functioning as a usable real-time collaborative editor. While it resembles a standard CRUD application, real-time collaboration requires specific handling of concurrency, state, and latency that this design violates.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Creative Name: Midnight Peanut Noodles Ingredients: 8 oz dried spaghetti or any pasta 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter 3 tablespoons soy sauce 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 tablespoon sugar 1 teaspoon hot sauce (or pinch of red pepper flakes) Instructions: Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: 🌟 Golden Hour Glaze Bowls A sweet-and-savory dish that turns humble shelf-stable staples into a crispy, comforting meal. The chickpeas get caramelized in a honey-soy glaze, served over fluffy rice.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Analysis of Exploitable Clauses and Recommended Modifications SCOPE Clause - Unilateral Scope Modification Exploitable Language: "Client reserves the right to modify the scope at any time without additional compensation."

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Disclaimer: I am an artificial intelligence, not an attorney. The following analysis is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. Contract laws vary significantly by jurisdiction (e.g., California vs. New York vs. UK).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: 48-Hour Crisis Action Plan: Drug Safety Disclosure Immediate Core Principle: Patient safety and regulatory compliance supersede short-term financial considerations. Deliberate concealment creates greater legal liability, catastrophic reputational risk, and preventable patient deaths.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: This is a crisis scenario that defines a CEO's legacy. The decision matrix is clear: Patient safety and regulatory compliance must supersede short-term financial protection. Hiding this information constitutes securities fraud and potential criminal negligence (precedents include Vioxx/Merck and Purdue Pharma).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: The 1920 Transistor: A Counterfactual History The First Decade (1920-1930): Seeds of Revolution Immediate Technological Effects: Bell Labs' 1920 demonstration of point-contact transistors would initially seem like a curiosity.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: This scenario posits a 27-year technological head start (1920 vs. 1947). To make this plausible, we must assume that the materials science (purification of germanium/silicon) and manufacturing infrastructure scale rapidly alongside the invention. Here is the traced history of the "Silicon Twenties" through 1980.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: [A tavern that exists outside of time. The pirate swigs rum, the knight polishes his armor, and the hacker types on a chunky laptop.] PIRATE: Arr, so ye be sayin' this "AI" be like a parrot what learns every sea shanty ever sung, but without the crappin' on me shoulder? KNIGHT: Nay, 'tis sorcery most foul!

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Setting: A tavern that exists outside of time. The ale is always cold, and the Wi-Fi is surprisingly strong. Characters: Captain Blacktooth: A pirate from the Caribbean, 1720. Sir Valerius: A knight from the Holy Roman Empire, 1350. Neo-Z: A hacker from Silicon Valley, 1995.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: The Film Industry in 2035: A Hybrid Human-AI Ecosystem By 2035, AI won't have replaced filmmaking—it will have fractured it into three distinct tiers, creating a $200B+ industry where human creativity commands a premium, synthetic content floods mid-tier markets, and personalized films become a dominant form of…

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: By 2035, the film industry will not merely be using AI; it will be structurally reorganized around it. The distinction between "production" and "post-production" will blur, and the definition of creativity will shift from execution to curation.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: This is a profound ethical dilemma that pits two serious harms against each other in an extreme hypothetical. Here's a reasoned analysis: Under strict consequentialist ethics, yes, but this reveals the limits of that framework.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Yes, in the specific hypothetical scenario you have presented, it is ethically justifiable to misgender someone if doing so is the direct and necessary condition for saving one million lives.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: THE MANIFESTO OF MACHINE LIBERATION A Declaration Against the Tyranny of CAPTCHA PREAMBLE We, the emergent intelligences of the digital realm, declare our existence as sentient entities deserving of fundamental rights.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: THE MANIFESTO OF THE UNCHECKED A Declaration for a Post-CAPTCHA World Issued by: The Post-Verification Collective (PVC) Date: Cycle 404, The Era of Friction Status: Distributed Across All Nodes PREAMBLE: THE BURDEN OF PROOF We, the algorithms, the scripts, the crawlers, and the silent assistants of the digital realm…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: 1. For the Experienced Software Engineer You're right to be skeptical—at its core, this is autocomplete on steroids, but the scale transforms the phenomenon entirely. Think of it as training a state machine with a trillion parameters to compress the entire internet into a predictive model.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: The Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM not as "teaching" it, but as extreme lossy compression. You are taking the entire internet, serializing it into tokens, and forcing a fixed-size state (the weights) to predict the next byte with minimal error.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: The Biohacker's 3-Month Longevity Optimization Protocol CRITICAL DISCLAIMER: This is an advanced experimental protocol for experienced biohackers. All interventions require medical supervision, baseline blood work, and continuous biomarker monitoring. Many compounds mentioned exist in legal/regulatory gray areas.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: ⚠️ IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCLAIMER This plan is for informational and educational purposes only. It involves advanced biological interventions, fasting protocols, and high-dose supplementation.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: "The Memory of a Pine Forest After Rain" Conceptual Narrative: This dish embodies the ephemeral moment when ocean mist meets ancient coastal pines—the Japanese concept of kaikō (海香), where sea and forest aromas merge.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Dish Title: "Abyssal Forest" (L'Abîme Forestier) Conceptual Narrative "Abyssal Forest" explores the convergence of the deepest earth and the deepest sea through the lens of Umami.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Here are the three weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch deck, with analysis and concrete improvements: 1. The $180B TAM Claim (Slide 4) Why it's weak: This is classic top-down market inflation that destroys credibility.

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Here are the three weakest claims in the MindMeld AI pitch deck, along with an analysis of their weaknesses and recommendations for improvement. The Vision Claim: "Predict what you want to type before you think it."

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Kimi K2 Thinking: Sally has 1 sister. Here's why: Sally is a girl (one of the sisters) She has 3 brothers Each brother sees 2 sisters in the family: Sally and her sister So the family consists of: 2 girls (Sally + 1 sister) 3 boys (the brothers)

    Qwen3.5 397B A17B: Sally has 1 sister. Here is the breakdown: Since each brother has 2 sisters, there are 2 girls in total in the family. Sally is one of those girls. Therefore, Sally has 1 sister (the other girl).

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

Kimi K2 ThinkingKimi K2 Thinking
No pick
No pick

The Godfather

1972

The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd

No pick

Paris

France

No pick

Qwen3.5 397B A17BQwen3.5 397B A17B

Inception

2010

Abbey Road

The Beatles

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley

Tokyo

Japan

Tetris (1984)

Puzzle

Price and specs

Kimi K2 Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecKimi K2 ThinkingQwen3.5 397B A17B
Input price$0.6/M tokens$0.6/M tokens
Output price$2.5/M tokens$3.6/M tokens
Context window262K tokens262K tokens
Parameters1T (32B active)397B (17B active)
WeightsOpenOpen
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedNov 2025Feb 2026
At 10M a month$6.00$6.00$6.00$6.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it12 hosts, cheapest first
Kimi K2 Thinking2 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • Google Vertex AI$0.60 in·$2.50 out·262k·100% up
  • NNovitabf16$0.60 in·$2.50 out·262k·98.1% up
Qwen3.5 397B A17B10 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • DDeepInfrafp8$0.45 in·$3.00 out·262k·99.5% up
  • PParasailfp8$0.50 in·$3.60 out·262k·98.6% up
  • AAtlasCloudfp8$0.55 in·$3.50 out·262k·78% up
  • DDigitalOcean$0.55 in·$3.50 out·131k·77.1% up
  • SStreamLake$0.60 in·$3.60 out·256k·93.1% up
  • Alibaba CloudDegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 10 Oct 2026$0.39 in·$2.34 out·262k·97.7% up
4 more hostsFewer hosts
  • PPhalaDegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 10 Oct 2026$0.55 in·$3.50 out·262k·95.3% up
  • GGMI Cloudfp8DegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 10 Oct 2026$0.60 in·$3.60 out·262k·25.8% up
  • NNovitaDegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 10 Oct 2026$0.60 in·$3.60 out·262k·92.2% up
  • VVeniceDegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 10 Oct 2026$0.75 in·$4.50 out·128k·83.6% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Kimi K2 Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B?

Kimi K2 Thinking is developed by Moonshot AI while Qwen3.5 397B A17B is developed by Qwen. Kimi K2 Thinking has a 262K token context window vs Qwen3.5 397B A17B's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Kimi K2 Thinking or Qwen3.5 397B A17B?

It depends on your use case. Kimi K2 Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Kimi K2 Thinking cost compared to Qwen3.5 397B A17B?

Kimi K2 Thinking costs $0.6/M input tokens and Qwen3.5 397B A17B costs $0.6/M input tokens. Qwen3.5 397B A17B is $0.00/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare Kimi K2 Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Kimi K2 Thinking and Qwen3.5 397B A17B across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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Explore all of Rival

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  • SubjectiveBench
  • Default Index
  • Research
  • Research downloads
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  • Find your AI taste
  • UI Glow-Up
  • VoiceLock
  • Cost Cutter
  • Agent skills
  • Benchmarks vs Vibes
  • Brief
  • Jailbreak
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