# dots3-note Preview vs Kimi K2.6

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for dots3-note Preview and Kimi K2.6 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-kimi-2-6
- Last updated: September 28, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 11
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick dots3-note Preview 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

- dots3-note Preview leads overall 62.64 to 59.22.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 56.4 for dots3-note Preview and 43.8 for Kimi K2.6.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE in Knowledge, with scores of 52.6% and 34.7%.
- dots3-note Preview is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- dots3-note Preview also has the larger context window at 512K.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Dots Studio | Moonshot AI |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 512K | 256K |
| Overall Score | 62.64 | 59.22 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 31 | 37 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.95 / $4.00 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 56.4 (Estimated · #28/117)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 43.8 (Supported · #50/117)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Claw-Eval | 73.4% | 62.3% | dots3-note Preview |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 55.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| skillsBench | 52.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| APEX-Agents | 30.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 83.3% | 83.2% | dots3-note Preview |
| HLE w/ tools | 52.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 92.1% | 92.5% | Kimi K2.6 |
| WideResearch | 78.9% | 80.8% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 66.7% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 73.1% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon | Coming soon | 50% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 55.9% | 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 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 53.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 46.2 (Supported · #48/142)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Codeforces | 3056.0 | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 91.5% | 89.6% | dots3-note Preview |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.4% | 80.2% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE Multilingual | 75.7% | 76.7% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 61% | 58.6% | dots3-note Preview |
| NL2Repo | 49.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | Coming soon | 52.2% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | Coming soon | 66.7% | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | Coming soon | 37.89% | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | Coming soon | 47.6% | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 86.8% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 76.2% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 72.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 81.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 67.2 (Unranked · 10 rankable rows)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 64.9 (#27/50)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SimpleVQA | 72.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.1% | 79.4% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MathVision | 87.7% | 87.4% | dots3-note Preview |
| ZeroBench | 19.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 83.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GDP.pdf (no tools) | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | 53.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | 50.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMVU | 79.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | 86.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro w/ Python | Coming soon | 80.1% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | Coming soon | 80.4% | Coming soon |
| V* | Coming soon | 96.9% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 59.1 (Supported · #40/168)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 52.6% | 34.7% | dots3-note Preview |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 90.5% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 90.5% | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 89.1% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 87.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 85.2 (#37/124)
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFEval | 93.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 71 (#1/7)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | Kimi K2.6 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IMOAnswerBench | 90.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| 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, dots3-note Preview or Kimi K2.6?

dots3-note Preview is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between dots3-note Preview and Kimi K2.6?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 56.4 for dots3-note Preview and 43.8 for Kimi K2.6.

### How many benchmarks does dots3-note Preview cover on BenchLM?

dots3-note Preview currently has 31 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

- [dots3-note Preview vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [dots3-note Preview vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-dots3-note-preview)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-kimi-2-6)

## Explore More

- [dots3-note Preview profile](/models/dots3-note-preview)
- [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)