Kimi K2 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· Qwen3.5-35B-A3B

Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.5-35B-A3B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Kimi K2 only becomes the better choice if agentic is the priority or you would rather avoid the extra latency and token burn of a reasoning model.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 68 to 60. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B's sharpest advantage is in knowledge, where it averages 79.3 against 64. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is LiveCodeBench, 53.7% to 74.6%. Kimi K2 does hit back in agentic, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is the reasoning model in the pair, while Kimi K2 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.

Operational tradeoffs

PricePricing unavailableFree*
Speed43 t/sN/A
TTFT1.51sN/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 K2Qwen3.5-35B-A3B
AgenticKimi K2 wins
Terminal-Bench 2.047.1%40.5%
BrowseComp60.2%61%
tau2-bench66.1%81.2%
OSWorld-Verified54.5%
CodingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
SWE-bench Verified65.8%69.2%
LiveCodeBench53.7%74.6%
Multimodal & Grounded
MMMU-Pro75.1%
Reasoning
hle44.9%
LongBench v259%
KnowledgeQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
MMLU89.5%
GPQA75.1%84.2%
SuperGPQA57.2%63.4%
MMLU-Pro81.1%85.3%
SimpleQA31%
Instruction FollowingQwen3.5-35B-A3B wins
IFEval89.8%91.9%
Multilingual
sweMultilingual61.1%
MMLU-ProX81%
Mathematics
AIME 202469.6%
AIME 202549.5%
MATH-50097.4%
HMMT Feb 202538.8%
Frequently Asked Questions (5)

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

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B is ahead overall, 68 to 60. The biggest single separator in this matchup is LiveCodeBench, where the scores are 53.7% and 74.6%.

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

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.3 versus 64. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 72.6 versus 58.2. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Kimi K2 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 52.1 versus 50.5. Inside this category, tau2-bench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Qwen3.5-35B-A3B has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 91.9 versus 89.8. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 31, 2026

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