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Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 leads the LLM Stats Score 21.7 to 16.5.

Moonshot AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 21.7 to 16.5, ranking #176 overall.

In the 8 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 wins 7; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Kimi K2-Instruct-0905

  • overall performance matters — it scores 21.7 and ranks #176 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 7 of 8 exact shared results

Choose Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2025

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Core performance indexes
21.7
#176
16.5
#211
22.0
#164
15.2
#214
-4.2
#169
5.1
#139
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
7 of 8
1 of 8
Input price
— / M
$0.20 / M
Output price
— / M
$0.70 / M
Context window
131,072

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

4 shared
Index
Kimi K2-Instruct-0905
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
21.8#137
16.9#193
11.9#59
8.0#77
24.6#57
18.3#96
24.6#47
18.6#78
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

29 reported for Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 · 50 for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

8 shared

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 outperforms in 7 benchmarks (GPQA, IFEval, MMLU, MMLU-Pro, MMLU-Redux, SimpleQA, SuperGPQA), while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is better at 1 benchmark (AIME 2025).

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

969.0B diff

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 has 969.0B more parameters than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct, making it 3125.8% larger.

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2-Instruct-0905
1.0Tparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
31.0Bparameters
1000.0B
Kimi K2-Instruct-0905
31.0B
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct specifies input context (131,072 tokens). Only Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct specifies output context (32,768 tokens).

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2-Instruct-0905
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Input131,072 tokens
Output32,768 tokens
Sun Sep 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct supports multimodal inputs, whereas Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 does not.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 is licensed under MIT, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905

MIT

Open weights

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 was released on 2025-09-05, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct was released on 2025-09-22.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is 1 month newer than Kimi K2-Instruct-0905.

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905

Sep 5, 2025

1.0 years ago

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Sep 22, 2025

11 months ago

2w newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905
✓ Preferred
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct.

Which is better, Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 or Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 leads the LLM Stats Score 21.7 to 16.5. Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 is made by Moonshot AI and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 compare to Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct in benchmarks?

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 scores MATH-500: 97.4%, MMLU-Redux: 92.7%, IFEval: 89.8%, AutoLogi: 89.5%, MMLU: 89.5%. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct scores DocVQAtest: 95.0%, ScreenSpot: 94.7%, OCRBench: 90.3%, MMLU-Redux: 88.4%, MMBench-V1.1: 87.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 supports an unknown number of tokens and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct supports 131K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (21.7 vs 16.5), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (MIT vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

Kimi K2-Instruct-0905 is developed by Moonshot AI and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.