Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Kimi K2.6
Mistral Mistral Medium 3.5 | Moonshot AI Kimi K2.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Company | Mistral | Moonshot AI |
| Release date | Apr 29 2026 | Apr 21 2026 |
| Access | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Specifications | ||
Parameters | 128B | 1T |
Context window | 256k | 256k |
| Benchmarks | ||
Nonsense detection BullshitBench v2Given a confidently-worded but nonsensical prompt, does the AI spot that it makes no sense and push back — instead of playing along and inventing an answer? The score is how often it clearly called out the nonsense. Higher is better. | — | 65% |
Coding SWE-Bench VerifiedReal coding tasks pulled from open-source projects — the AI has to find and fix actual bugs. A human-checked version of the original SWE-Bench. Higher is better. | 77.6% | 80.2%Best |
Agentic coding CursorBench v3.1Cursor's own test of harder, real-world coding tasks inside a code editor. Higher is better. | — | 47.6% |
Next.js coding Next.js EvalsVercel's open eval of how well AI coding agents build and migrate real Next.js apps — measured as the share of tasks the agent completes successfully. Higher is better. | — | 67% |
Competitive coding LiveCodeBenchCoding problems published so recently the AI can't have seen them in training — a contamination-free test of raw programming skill. Higher is better. | — | 89.6% |
Science GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions in biology, physics, and chemistry — hard enough that subject-matter PhDs score around 65%. Higher is better. | — | 90.5% |
Community preference (code) Arena Elo (Code)Like the text arena, but people vote on which AI writes better code. The votes become a chess-style Elo rating on arena.ai. Higher is better. | — | 1513 |
| Timeline | ||
| Release gap | Kimi K2.6 shipped 8 days before Mistral Medium 3.5 | |
Which is better: Mistral Medium 3.5 or Kimi K2.6?
Kimi K2.6 leads Mistral Medium 3.5 on 1 of the 1 benchmark they both report (SWE-Bench Verified). Kimi K2.6 shipped 8 days before Mistral Medium 3.5, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.
Mistral Medium 3.5 has 128B parameters, while Kimi K2.6 has 1T. Context windows are 256k (Mistral Medium 3.5) vs 256k (Kimi K2.6).
On SWE-Bench Verified, Kimi K2.6 leads at 80.2% vs Mistral Medium 3.5 at 77.6%.
Frequently asked questions
Mistral Medium 3.5 was released by Mistral on Apr 29 2026.
Kimi K2.6 was released by Moonshot AI on Apr 21 2026.
Kimi K2.6 leads on SWE-Bench Verified — Mistral Medium 3.5 77.6% vs Kimi K2.6 80.2%.
Mistral Medium 3.5 has a 256k context window; Kimi K2.6 has 256k.
Other comparisons
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Sonnet 5Kimi K2.6 vs Claude Sonnet 5Mistral Medium 3.5 vs GPT-5.6 SolKimi K2.6 vs GPT-5.6 SolMistral Medium 3.5 vs Gemini 3.5 FlashKimi K2.6 vs Gemini 3.5 FlashMistral Medium 3.5 vs Muse Spark 1.1Kimi K2.6 vs Muse Spark 1.1Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Grok 4.5Kimi K2.6 vs Grok 4.5Mistral Medium 3.5 vs DeepSeek-V4-ProKimi K2.6 vs DeepSeek-V4-Pro