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Kimi K2.5 vs Qwen3.5-122B-A10B

Head-to-head comparison across 7benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.

Kimi K2.5

64

VS

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B

65

4 categoriesvs3 categories

Verified leaderboard positions: Kimi K2.5 #11 · Qwen3.5-122B-A10B #8

Pick Qwen3.5-122B-A10B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Kimi K2.5 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Category Radar

Head-to-Head by Category

Category Breakdown

Agentic

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
54.6vs56.1

+1.5 difference

Coding

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
64.2vs72

+7.8 difference

Reasoning

Kimi K2.5
61vs60.2

+0.8 difference

Knowledge

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
65.1vs81.6

+16.5 difference

Multilingual

Kimi K2.5
82.3vs82.2

+0.1 difference

Multimodal

Kimi K2.5
78.5vs77.2

+1.3 difference

Inst. Following

Kimi K2.5
93.9vs93.4

+0.5 difference

Operational Comparison

Kimi K2.5

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B

Price (per 1M tokens)

$0.6 / $3

$0 / $0

Speed

45 t/s

N/A

Latency (TTFT)

2.38s

N/A

Context Window

256K

262K

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-122B-A10B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Kimi K2.5 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B finishes one point ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 65 to 64. That is enough to call, but not enough to treat as a blowout. This matchup comes down to a few meaningful edges rather than one model dominating the board.

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 81.6 against 65.1. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 76.8% to 72%. Kimi K2.5 does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Kimi K2.5 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.60 input / $3.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Qwen3.5-122B-A10B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Qwen3.5-122B-A10B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Kimi K2.5 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. Qwen3.5-122B-A10B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 256K for Kimi K2.5.

Benchmark Deep Dive

Frequently Asked Questions (8)

Which is better, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 65 to 64. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 76.8% and 72%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 81.6 versus 65.1. Inside this category, SuperGPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72 versus 64.2. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 61 versus 60.2. Inside this category, LongBench v2 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Qwen3.5-122B-A10B has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 56.1 versus 54.6. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.5 versus 77.2. Inside this category, MMVU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 93.9 versus 93.4. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-122B-A10B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.3 versus 82.2. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Self-host vs API cost

Estimates at 50,000 req/day · 1000 tokens/req average.

Kimi K2.5
API / mo$2,700
Self-host / mo$5,221
Break-even132M/day
Qwen3.5-122B-A10B
API / mo$0
Self-host / moN/A
Break-even
Proprietary model — self-hosting not applicable.
Model the full break-even

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Last updated: May 13, 2026

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