# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Kimi K3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-kimi-k3
- Last updated: October 2, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 13
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Kimi K3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Kimi K3 leads overall 72.14 to 67.37.
- The clearest category separation is in reasoning, where the averages are 78.7 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 65.8 for Kimi K3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is SWE-bench (Vals) in Coding, with scores of 79.6% and 93.4%.
- Claude Sonnet 5 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Kimi K3 also has the larger context window at 1.05M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Moonshot AI |
| Type | Proprietary | Pending |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1.05M |
| Overall Score | 67.37 | 72.14 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 48 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $3.00 / $15.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Kimi K3
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.4 (Supported · #16/119)
- Kimi K3 public-lane score: 68.1 (Supported · #8/119)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 88.3% | Kimi K3 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | 91.2% | Kimi K3 |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 80.9% | Kimi K3 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | 18% | Kimi K3 |
| DeepSearchQA | Coming soon | 95.0% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 73.2% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 84.2% | Coming soon |
| AutomationBench | Coming soon | 30.8% | Coming soon |
| JobBench | Coming soon | 52.9% | Coming soon |
| APEX-Agents | Coming soon | 37.6% | Coming soon |
| SpreadsheetBench 2 | Coming soon | 34.8% | Coming soon |
| DECK-Bench | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Kimi K3
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 59.8 (Supported · #20/144)
- Kimi K3 public-lane score: 61.4 (Supported · #18/144)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CursorBench 3.2 | 61.5% | 60.8% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 87.2% | Kimi K3 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 93.4% | Kimi K3 |
| CursorBench 4.0 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 67.5% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE | Coming soon | 81.2% | Coming soon |
| ProgramBench | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |
| Kimi Code Bench v2 | Coming soon | 72.9% | Coming soon |
| sweMarathon | Coming soon | 42% | Coming soon |
| PostTrain Bench | Coming soon | 36.6% | Coming soon |
| MLS-Bench Lite | Coming soon | 48.3% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 73.7% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 57.3% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 25.9% | Coming soon |
| PostTrainBench v1.1 | Coming soon | 32.0% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Kimi K3 public-lane score: 65.8 (#18/27)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-1 | Coming soon | 94.50% | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Coming soon | 60.4% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (#15/49)
- Kimi K3 public-lane score: 89.4 (#1/49)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | 91.3% | Kimi K3 |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | 84.8% | Kimi K3 |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 63.3% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 81.6% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro w/ Python | Coming soon | 83.4% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 94.3% | Coming soon |
| MathVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 97.8% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 85.7% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | Coming soon | 23.0% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench w/ Python | Coming soon | 41.0% | Coming soon |
| WorldVQA ForceAnswer | Coming soon | 51.0% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench | Coming soon | 91.1% | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | Coming soon | 58.5% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Kimi K3
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64 (Supported · #29/171)
- Kimi K3 public-lane score: 67.9 (Supported · #18/171)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | 56% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | 43.5% | Kimi K3 |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 92.9% | Kimi K3 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 88.0% | Kimi K3 |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 93.5% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 93.5% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Kimi K3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Gray Swan IPI (15 attempts) | Coming soon | 52.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Kimi K3?

Kimi K3 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Kimi K3?

The widest category gap is in reasoning, where the averages are 78.7 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 65.8 for Kimi K3.

### 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 K3 cover on BenchLM?

Kimi K3 currently has 48 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Kimi K3 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-kimi-k3)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Kimi K3 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-kimi-k3)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Kimi K3 profile](/models/kimi-k3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)