# Kimi K2.6 vs MiniMax M3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/kimi-2-6-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: October 15, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 14
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Kimi K2.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M3 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Kimi K2.6 leads overall 60.38 to 54.94.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 73.8 for Kimi K2.6 and 61.5 for MiniMax M3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is MCP Atlas in Agentic, with scores of 55.9% and 74.2%.
- MiniMax M3 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- MiniMax M3 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Kimi K2.6 | MiniMax M3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Moonshot AI | MiniMax |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 256K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 60.38 | 54.94 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 37 | 27 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.95 / $4.00 | $0.30 / $1.20 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Kimi K2.6
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 44.5 (Supported · #58/126)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 39.4 (Supported · #67/126)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 83.2% | 83.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 73.1% | 70.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Toolathlon | 50% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 55.9% | 74.2% | MiniMax M3 |
| Claw-Eval | 62.3% | 74.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| DeepSearchQA | 92.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 80.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 56.82% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 18.0% | 19.8% | MiniMax M3 |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 4.6% | 4.6% | Tie |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 53.6% | 53.6% | Tie |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 66.0% | Coming soon |
| BankerToolBench | Coming soon | 76.1% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Kimi K2.6
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 43.2 (Supported · #56/149)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 36.5 (Supported · #73/149)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.2% | 80.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 89.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 58.6% | 59% | MiniMax M3 |
| SWE Multilingual | 76.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SciCode | 52.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 66.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 37.89% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | 47.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 86.8% | 82.2% | Kimi K2.6 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 76.2% | 75.0% | Kimi K2.6 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 66.0% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 42.1% | Coming soon |
| VIBE V2 | Coming soon | 50.1% | Coming soon |
| SVG-Bench | Coming soon | 63.7% | Coming soon |
| KernelBench Hard | Coming soon | 28.8% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 48.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 82.9 (#5/29)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 73.8 (#27/54)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 61.5 (#43/54)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU-Pro | 79.4% | 78.1% | Kimi K2.6 |
| MMMU-Pro w/ Python | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MathVision | 87.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| V* | 96.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 45.1% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.6% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.6% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 85.4% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Kimi K2.6
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 60.3 (Supported · #48/182)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 49.6 (Supported · #81/182)

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 90.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | 90.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 34.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 89.1% | 92.7% | MiniMax M3 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.6% | 84.2% | Kimi K2.6 |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 93.8 (#5/146)

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Kimi K2.6 public-lane score: 76.8 (#4/12)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | 96.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HMMT Feb 2026 | 92.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMAnswerBench | 86.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 57.193% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 25.641% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| USAMO 2026 | Coming soon | 85.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Kimi K2.6 or MiniMax M3?

Kimi K2.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Kimi K2.6 and MiniMax M3?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 73.8 for Kimi K2.6 and 61.5 for MiniMax M3.

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

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

### How many benchmarks does MiniMax M3 cover on BenchLM?

MiniMax M3 currently has 27 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Kimi K2.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-minimax-m3)
- [Kimi K2.6 vs GPT-6.1 Sol](/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-vs-kimi-2-6)
- [MiniMax M3 vs GPT-6.1 Sol](/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-vs-minimax-m3)

## Explore More

- [Kimi K2.6 profile](/models/kimi-2-6)
- [MiniMax M3 profile](/models/minimax-m3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)