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Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Kimi K2 Thinking

3 vs 0 benchmarks won

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Moonshot AI
Kimi K2 Thinking
Overview
CompanyAnthropicMoonshot AI
Release dateSep 29 2025Nov 6 2025
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
1T
Context window
256k
Benchmarks
Science reasoning
GPQA Diamond
83.4%
Software engineering
SWE-Bench Verified
77.2%
71.3%
Multimodal understanding
MMMU
68%
Timeline
Release gapClaude Sonnet 4.5 shipped 38 days before Kimi K2 Thinking

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi K2 Thinking?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads Kimi K2 Thinking on 3 of the tracked benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU). Claude Sonnet 4.5 shipped 38 days before Kimi K2 Thinking, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Kimi K2 Thinking is an open-source / open-weight model; Claude Sonnet 4.5 is proprietary.

On SWE-Bench Verified, Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores 77.2%, 5.9 points above Kimi K2 Thinking at 71.3%.

Frequently asked questions

When was Claude Sonnet 4.5 released?
Claude Sonnet 4.5 was released by Anthropic on Sep 29 2025.
When was Kimi K2 Thinking released?
Kimi K2 Thinking was released by Moonshot AI on Nov 6 2025.
Which is better at coding, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi K2 Thinking?
On SWE-Bench Verified (real-world software-engineering tasks), Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads — Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores 77.2% and Kimi K2 Thinking scores 71.3%.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi K2 Thinking open source?
Kimi K2 Thinking is an open-source / open-weight model released by Moonshot AI. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is a proprietary model released by Anthropic.

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