# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Kimi K2.6

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K2.6 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-kimi-2-6
- Last updated: September 18, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 14
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Kimi K2.6 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 5 leads overall 69.68 to 65.5.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 65.9 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 46.7 for Kimi K2.6.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE in Knowledge, with scores of 57.4% and 34.7%.
- Kimi K2.6 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Claude Sonnet 5 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K2.6 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Moonshot AI |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 256K |
| Overall Score | 69.68 | 65.5 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 37 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.95 / $4.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 65.9 (Supported · #11/154)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 46.7 (Supported · #78/154)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 66.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | 83.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | 73.1% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 53.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | Coming soon | 50% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 62.3% | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | Coming soon | 92.5% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 80.8% | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | Coming soon | 56.82% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 18.0% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 4.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 63.9 (Supported · #13/154)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 50.7 (Supported · #58/154)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | 80.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 58.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | 76.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | 66.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 86.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 76.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | Coming soon | 89.6% | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 52.2% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 37.89% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | Coming soon | 47.6% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (#14/48)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 63.9 (#26/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | 80.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 79.4% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro w/ Python | Coming soon | 80.1% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 87.4% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 96.9% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.5 (Supported · #20/184)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 61.3 (Supported · #32/184)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | 34.7% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 89.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 87.6% | Kimi K2.6 |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 90.5% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 90.5% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 71 (#1/7)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 96.4% | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | Coming soon | 92.7% | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | Coming soon | 86.0% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | Coming soon | 38.966% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | Coming soon | 14.580% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K2.6?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K2.6?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 65.9 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 46.7 for Kimi K2.6.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Kimi K2.6 cover on BenchLM?

Kimi K2.6 currently has 37 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-kimi-2-6)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Kimi K2.6 profile](/models/kimi-2-6)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)