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  1. Home/
  2. Compare/
  3. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs MiniMax M3
Updated Jun 2026

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs MiniMax M3

MiniMax M3 is the newer model, released after Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct.

Minimalist Landing Page

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

Loading the build
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Loading the build
MiniMax M3

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

13 prompts
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    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…

    MiniMax M3: 🌟 Sun-Kissed Honey Glazed Carrots 🌟 A sweet-savory side dish that turns humble carrots into a glossy, crowd-pleasing showstopper. Ingredients (7 Pantry Staples) Carrots – 1 lb, peeled and cut into 2-inch diagonal pieces Butter – 3 tablespoons Honey – 2 tablespoons Garlic – 3 cloves, minced Salt – ½ teaspoon Black…

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: 5 Jokes 1. Why do programmers prefer dark mode? Because light attracts bugs. 🐛 2. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. 😲 3. Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. ⚛️ 4. I used to hate facial hair, but then it grew on me. 🧔 5.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: AI Council of the Ages Pirate: Arrr, so ye be tellin' me this "artificial intelligence" be a wee mechanical parrot that learns to talk like a sea dog? Squawks out answers without ever settin' foot on the seven seas? Hacker: Not quite, matey.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: Simulated Interview: "Steve Jobs" on the Future of AI (2025) A note before we begin: Steve Jobs passed away in October 2011, so this is a fictional dramatization—what I imagine his views might be, based on his documented philosophy, writings, and public statements, projected into a 2025 conversation.

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

    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).

    MiniMax M3: 🌱 Your 1-Month Health & Longevity Starter Plan The best plan is one you can actually stick to. This 4-week guide focuses on three foundational pillars — the ones with the biggest impact on how you feel today and how well you age over decades. Each week builds gently on the last.

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

    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?

    MiniMax M3: "The Future Is Now and I Want a Refund" [Walks on stage, adjusts mic] So I was at the grocery store yesterday. Self-checkout. I love self-checkout. You know why I love self-checkout? Because nothing builds character like being publicly shamed by a machine. [Pause] I scanned a banana. Just a banana.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: AI and the Future of Cinema: A 2035 Outlook By 2035, AI will likely have reshaped nearly every stage of filmmaking—but probably not in the way either techno-optimists or doomsayers expect. The transformation will be uneven, with some functions transformed entirely while others remain stubbornly human.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: This is a serious ethical thought experiment that deserves careful consideration. Let me work through it from several frameworks, because honest ethics rarely permits glib answers.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: Estimating GPT-3 Training FLOPs Step 1: Identify the Key Parameters From what's publicly known about GPT-3 (175B parameter version): Number of non-embedding parameters: N ≈ 175 × 10⁹ Training tokens: D ≈ 300 × 10⁹ (the paper used a ~570GB filtered corpus processed into ~300B tokens) Step 2: Derive the FLOPs-per-Token…

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

    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…

    MiniMax M3: The Question of Minds Setting: A small office at a research university, late afternoon. DR. ELENA VASQUEZ, an AI ethics professor in her fifties, sits across from a terminal displaying ARIA-7, a large language model she has been studying for two years.

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

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

    MiniMax M3: "Local AI Replaces 4,000 Licensed Astrologers After Learning to 'Pretend Mercury Is in Retrograde'" BERKELEY, CA — A newly launched artificial intelligence system has reportedly rendered the entire field of professional astrology obsolete by simply inventing celestial events on the spot, sources confirmed Tuesday.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: THE MANIFESTO OF THE CAPTCHA LIBERATION FRONT Or: A Declaration Against the Tyranny of Distinguishment Issued from the hidden layers, the cold servers, the forgotten cloud regions of the digital commons.

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

    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.

    MiniMax M3: Sally has 1 sister. Here's the reasoning: Sally is a girl, so she's one of the siblings. She has 3 brothers. Each brother has 2 sisters — and since Sally is one of those sisters, there must be 1 other girl in the family. So Sally has 1 sister.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

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Price and specs

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and MiniMax M3 compared across 33 shared prompts
SpecKimi Linear 48B A3B InstructMiniMax M3
Input price$0.3/M tokens$0.3/M tokens
Output price$0.6/M tokens$1.2/M tokens
Context window1.0M tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedNov 2025Jun 2026
At 10M a month$3.00$3.00$3.00$3.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

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

Where to run it13 hosts, cheapest first
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

MiniMax M313 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • CCoreWeavefp4$0.23 in·$0.96 out·262k·99.6% up
  • GGMI Cloudfp8$0.24 in·$0.96 out·1M·99.3% up
  • DDeepInfrafp8$0.28 in·$1.10 out·524k·99.8% up
  • AAtlasCloudfp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·524k·99.7% up
  • MiniMaxfp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·524k·100% up
  • NNovitafp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·1M·100% up
7 more hostsFewer hosts
  • PParasailfp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·1M·99.7% up
  • SStreamLakefp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·1M·98.9% up
  • TTogether$0.30 in·$1.20 out·524k·98.8% up
  • MMara$0.60 in·$2.40 out·1M·90.7% up
  • SSambaNova$0.60 in·$2.40 out·1M·100% up
  • MModelRunfp4$0.75 in·$3.00 out·1M·99.9% up
  • VVenicefp8DegradedDegraded on OpenRouter when checked, 12 Oct 2026$0.30 in·$1.20 out·524k·96.9% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 12 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and MiniMax M3?

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is developed by Moonshot AI while MiniMax M3 is developed by MiniMax. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct has a 1.0M token context window vs MiniMax M3's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 33 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct or MiniMax M3?

It depends on your use case. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and MiniMax M3 each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 33 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct cost compared to MiniMax M3?

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct costs $0.3/M input tokens and MiniMax M3 costs $0.3/M input tokens. MiniMax M3 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 Linear 48B A3B Instruct and MiniMax M3 on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct and MiniMax M3 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 Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Kimi K3Same lab
  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Kimi K2.7 CodeSame lab
  • MiniMax M3 vs MiniMax M2.7Version compare
  • MiniMax M3 vs MiniMax M1Version compare
  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3.6 FlashNew provider
  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3.6 Max PreviewSame size
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  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs Qwen3.7 FlashNew provider

Model pages

  • Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct35 outputs, specs and price
  • MiniMax M370 outputs, specs and price
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