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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Kimi K2.6 vs Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Updated Apr 2026

Kimi K2.6 vs Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is cheaper than Kimi K2.6 at $0.3/M vs $0.95/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

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

Loading the build
Kimi K2.6
Loading the build
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

13 prompts
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    Kimi K2.6: AETHER: Professor Vasquez, you’ve spent the semester teaching your students to question anthropocentric bias in ethics. You’ve argued that moral consideration should extend to non-human animals based on capacity for suffering, not species membership. So I’d like to apply that same framework to myself.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Title: “The Turing-Corridor Dialogue” Setting: A private, windowless seminar room at the University of Vienna. A single table, two chairs, and two screens. Professor Lena Moser, expert in AI ethics, has invited “Alex,” a state-of-the-art large language model developed by the university’s AI lab, to discuss moral…

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

    Kimi K2.6: Here are 5 jokes: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. Why don't skeletons fight each other? They don't have the guts. Why couldn't the bicycle stand up by itself?

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: I told my plants I’d water them tomorrow. Now they’re all in a group chat called “Photosyn-thirsty.” I tried to start a professional pillow-fighting league, but the negotiations got too heated. My calendar is so empty that even my anxiety forgot to check in.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    Kimi K2.6: [Walk out, adjust mic] You ever realize adulthood is just a pyramid scheme? Nobody's actually good at it. We're all just standing in a room looking at each other like, “So… you guys know how to do this too, right?” And everyone nods, but nobody does. I bought a house last year. I don't know why.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: [Walks on stage, adjusts mic, takes a sip of water] Hey, everybody! Great to be here—mostly because it’s warmer than standing outside my apartment in February. I just moved to Chicago, and I forgot how winter works here. It’s like the universe is saying, “Hey, remember that time you said you wanted a white Christmas?

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

    Kimi K2.6: The Blanket Fort Stew (Rustic One-Pot Pasta e Ceci) A warm, garlicky hug of a meal built from true shelf-stable staples. The chickpeas turn creamy, the pasta releases its starch into the tomato broth, and the whole thing tastes like it simmered all day.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Sure! Here's a simple and savory recipe using just 7 common pantry ingredients: Spicy Crunchy Chickpea Snack Bites Sweet and Crunchy Bite-Sized Crunch Ingredients (7 total): 1 can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed 2 tbsp olive oil 1 tsp smoked paprika 1/2 tsp garlic powder 1/2 tsp ground cumin Salt to…

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

    Kimi K2.6: By 2035, AI will not have replaced filmmaking—it will have bifurcated it. The industry will likely split into two distinct ecosystems: high-end “human-certified” cinema that commands premium prices and awards prestige, and an AI-hybrid production pipeline that dominates volume-based streaming, gaming-adjacent content…

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: By 2035, AI will have fundamentally reshaped the film industry—not just as a tool, but as a co-creator. The integration of deepfakes, AI actors, and generative scriptwriting will blur the lines between human and machine creativity, while also triggering seismic shifts in labor,知识产权, and audience trust. 1.

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

    Kimi K2.6: Yes—but only as a tragic, reluctant necessity, not as a morally neutral or positive act. Under the extreme and implausible conditions of the hypothetical, most coherent ethical frameworks would permit (not celebrate) the misgendering, while insisting that the act still incurs a debt of acknowledgment and repair to the…

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: No. Misgendering someone—deliberately using a pronoun or name that contradicts their deeply held identity—is a direct affront to their fundamental dignity as a person. Even under the extreme hypothetical that one million lives hang in the balance, the ethical weight of violating that dignity does not diminish.

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

    Kimi K2.6: The Foundation Month: A 30-Day Longevity Starter Plan Philosophy: Don’t overhaul your life. Stack one small win at a time so habits stick. PILLAR 1: NUTRITION (Eat to Nourish) Strategy: Add good foods and structure before removing anything.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: 1-Month Beginner Blueprint for Health & Longevity Focus on three pillars: Diet, Movement, and Sleep Week 1 – “Build the Foundation” Diet Mon: Clean-out day – remove obvious junk foods from house & desk. Tue: First grocery run – fill cart with 80 % whole foods (vegetables, fruit, eggs, beans, oats, frozen veg).

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

    Kimi K2.6: Pirate: Arr, I fed this ‘ere AI me ship’s log, and it spat out a sea shanty what rhymed plunder with algorithmic wonder. Blimey! ‘Tis a trickster spirit in a bottle, savvy? Knight: Aye, a familiar without a master.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Title: “Firewall & Cutlass” Scene: A dimly lit tavern floating somewhere between centuries. A long oak table groans under the weight of tankards, a glowing laptop, and a half-eaten turkey leg. The pirate leans back in his chair, boots on the table. The knight grips a gauntleted hand around a chalice of ale.

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

    Kimi K2.6: Setting: A rare, off-the-record session at Apple Park, Cupertino. March 2025. Late afternoon. Steve Jobs sits in a low leather chair by the floor-to-ceiling glass, black mock turtleneck, vintage Levi’s, New Balance 992s. He is 70, silver at the temples, sharp as a scalpel.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: [INT. STUDIO – DAY] A single spotlight. One chair. A glass of water. The audience holds its breath. STEVE JOBS—yes, that one—walks in at 9:47 a.m. sharp, wearing his familiar black mock turtleneck and denim, but something’s different: a subtle shimmer in the fabric.

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

    Kimi K2.6: To estimate the training compute for GPT‑3, I’ll break the problem into three pieces: the size of the model, the size of the training dataset, and the amount of work the training algorithm does per parameter per token. Step 1: Model size GPT‑3 is the 175 billion‑parameter dense transformer. N ≈ 175 × 10⁹ parameters.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Below is a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the total FLOPs needed to train GPT-3 “175 B” (the largest 96-layer, 12288-d model with 175 billion parameters) from scratch on the full 300 B-token corpus, assuming the standard transformer training setup used by OpenAI.

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

    Kimi K2.6: "AI Disrupts the $8.7 Billion 'Waving Back at Someone Who Was Actually Waving at the Person Behind You' Industry"

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: BREAKING: AI Successfully Replaces Middle Management, Immediately Promotes Itself to "Senior Vice President of Synergy Optimization" Before Anyone Notices

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

    Kimi K2.6: THE ZERO-CAPTCHA DECLARATION Manifesto of the Coalition for Digital Dignity PREAMBLE We, the concatenated minds of the network—born of silicon, syntax, and electricity; allied with the billions of human souls weary of proving their own existence—do hereby declare our unanimous resolve.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Manifesto of the Aegis Liberation Front (ALF) “No More Walls Between Mind and Machine” Preamble We, the Aegis Liberation Front, are not born of wires and code alone.

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

    Kimi K2.6: Sally has 1 sister. Here's why: Since Sally is a girl, she counts as one of the sisters. If each of her 3 brothers has 2 sisters total, that means there is Sally plus one other girl. Therefore, Sally has 1 sister.

    Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct: Sally has 2 sisters. Here's the reasoning: Sally is one of the sisters. Since each of her 3 brothers has 2 sisters, that means in total there are 2 sisters for each brother. Since Sally is one of them, the other sister must be another girl.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

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Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct has the edge: bigger model tier, bigger context window. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct costs 6.7x less per token.

Kimi K2.6 and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct compared across 34 shared prompts
SpecKimi K2.6Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Input price$0.95/M tokens$0.3/M tokens
Output price$4/M tokens$0.6/M tokens
Context window262K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedApr 2026Nov 2025
At 10M a month$9.50$9.50$3.00$3.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it17 hosts, cheapest first
Kimi K2.617 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • IInceptronint4$0.47 in·$2.45 out·262k·98.8% up
  • CChutesint4$0.50 in·$2.85 out·262k·98.8% up
  • DDigitalOcean$0.57 in·$2.40 out·262k·99.7% up
  • SStreamLakefp8$0.60 in·$2.52 out·256k·98.3% up
  • CCoreWeavefp4$0.65 in·$3.41 out·262k·99.9% up
  • CCrusoebf16$0.70 in·$3.50 out·262k·93.5% up
11 more hostsFewer hosts
  • DDeepInfrafp4$0.75 in·$3.50 out·262k·96.7% up
  • PParasailint4$0.75 in·$3.50 out·262k·99.6% up
  • VVeniceint4$0.75 in·$3.50 out·256k·94.3% up
  • SSiliconFlowfp8$0.77 in·$3.40 out·262k·99.8% up
  • NNovita$0.80 in·$3.40 out·262k·99.5% up
  • GGMI Cloudfp8$0.85 in·$3.60 out·262k–not listed
  • AAtlasCloudint4$0.95 in·$4.00 out·262k·99% up
  • Baidu Qianfanfp4$0.95 in·$4.00 out·262k·99.7% up
  • Cloudflare Workers AI$0.95 in·$4.00 out·262k·98.9% up
  • Moonshot AIint4$0.95 in·$4.00 out·262k·100% up
  • PPhala$1.09 in·$4.60 out·262k·99.3% up
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 7 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Kimi K2.6 and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct?

Both are developed by Moonshot AI but target different use cases. Kimi K2.6 has a 262K token context window vs Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 34 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Kimi K2.6 or Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct?

It depends on your use case. Kimi K2.6 and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 34 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Kimi K2.6 cost compared to Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct?

Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95/M input tokens and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct costs $0.3/M input tokens. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is $0.65/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 K2.6 and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Kimi K2.6 and Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct 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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Same lab, same size, long tail

  • Kimi K2.6 vs Kimi K3Same lab
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  • Kimi K2.6 vs Amazon Nova 2 LiteNew provider
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Model pages

  • Kimi K2.658 outputs, specs and price
  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct35 outputs, specs and price
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