Head-to-head comparison across 2benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Kimi K2.6
84
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct
27
Verified leaderboard positions: Kimi K2.6 #10 · Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct unranked
Pick Kimi K2.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Coding
+34.8 difference
Knowledge
+12.9 difference
Kimi K2.6
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct
$0.95 / $4
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
256K
128K
Pick Kimi K2.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct only becomes the better choice if you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.
Kimi K2.6 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 84 to 27. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Kimi K2.6's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 72 against 37.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 89.6% to 37.2%.
Kimi K2.6 is the reasoning model in the pair, while Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Kimi K2.6 gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Instruct.
Kimi K2.6 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 84 to 27. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 89.6% and 37.2%.
Kimi K2.6 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 53.8 versus 40.9. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Kimi K2.6 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 37.2. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Estimates at 50,000 req/day · 1000 tokens/req average.
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