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Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Kimi Linear

3 vs 0 benchmarks won

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Moonshot AI
Kimi Linear
Overview
CompanyAnthropicMoonshot AI
Release dateSep 29 2025Oct 2025
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
48B
Context window
Benchmarks
Science reasoning
GPQA Diamond
83.4%
Software engineering
SWE-Bench Verified
77.2%
Multimodal understanding
MMMU
68%
Timeline
Release gapClaude Sonnet 4.5 shipped 2 days before Kimi Linear

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi Linear?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads Kimi Linear on 3 of the tracked benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU). Claude Sonnet 4.5 shipped 2 days before Kimi Linear, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

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

Direct benchmark comparisons are unavailable — at least one of these models has not published scores on GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, or MMMU.

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 Linear released?
Kimi Linear was released by Moonshot AI on Oct 2025.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Kimi Linear open source?
Kimi Linear 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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