Kimi K2.5 vs Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Agentic
Coding
Multimodal & Grounded
Reasoning
Knowledge
Instruction Following
Multilingual
Mathematics

Kimi K2.5· Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Quick Verdict

Pick Kimi K2.5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B only becomes the better choice if knowledge is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Kimi K2.5 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 71 to 67. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Kimi K2.5's sharpest advantage is in reasoning, where it averages 69.3 against 59. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SuperGPQA, 74% to 63.4%. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B does hit back in knowledge, 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 $0.50 input / $2.80 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.00 input / $0.00 output per 1M tokens for Qwen3.5-35B-A3B. That is roughly Infinityx on output cost alone. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B 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. Qwen3.5-35B-A3B gives you the larger context window at 262K, compared with 128K for Kimi K2.5.

Operational tradeoffs

Price$0.50 / $2.80Free*
Speed45 t/sN/A
TTFT2.38sN/A
Context128K262K

Decision framing

BenchLM keeps the benchmark table and the operator tradeoffs on the same page so a better score does not hide a materially slower, pricier, or smaller-context model.

Runtime metrics show N/A when BenchLM does not have a sourced snapshot for that exact model. The scoring rules and freshness policy are documented on the methodology page.

BenchmarkKimi K2.5Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
AgenticKimi K2.5 wins
Terminal-Bench 2.050.8%40.5%
BrowseComp60.6%61%
OSWorld-Verified63.3%54.5%
tau2-bench81.2%
CodingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
HumanEval99%
SWE-bench Verified76.8%69.2%
LiveCodeBench85%74.6%
SWE-bench Pro40%
SWE-Rebench58.5%
React Native Evals74.9%
Multimodal & GroundedQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMMU-Pro78.5%75.1%
OfficeQA Pro69%
ReasoningKimi K2.5 wins
MuSR72%
BBH81%
LongBench v267%59%
MRCRv270%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMLU77%
GPQA87.6%84.2%
SuperGPQA74%63.4%
MMLU-Pro87.1%85.3%
HLE11%
FrontierScience67%
SimpleQA74%
Instruction FollowingKimi K2.5 wins
IFEval94%91.9%
MultilingualQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MGSM83%
MMLU-ProX78%81%
Mathematics
AIME 202377%
AIME 202479%
AIME 202578%
HMMT Feb 202373%
HMMT Feb 202475%
HMMT Feb 202574%
BRUMO 202576%
MATH-50082%
Frequently Asked Questions (8)

Which is better, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Kimi K2.5 is ahead overall, 71 to 67. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SuperGPQA, where the scores are 74% and 63.4%.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.3 versus 62.8. Inside this category, SuperGPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72.6 versus 63.2. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 69.3 versus 59. 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 Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.6 versus 50.5. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.1 versus 74.2. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Kimi K2.5 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 94 versus 91.9. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Kimi K2.5 or Qwen3.5-35B-A3B?

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 81 versus 79.8. Inside this category, MMLU-ProX is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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