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Kimi K2 Instruct vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Kimi K2 Instruct leads the LLM Stats Score 22.0 to 16.5. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is 1.5x cheaper per token.

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

Which is better?

Kimi K2 Instruct leads the overall LLM Stats Score 22.0 to 16.5, ranking #171 overall.

In the 9 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Kimi K2 Instruct wins 8; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

On price, Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is roughly 1.5x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

Kimi K2 Instruct also accepts a larger context window (200,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.

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

Choose Kimi K2 Instruct

  • overall performance matters — it scores 22.0 and ranks #171 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning — it leads those capability indexes
  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 8 of 9 exact shared results
  • you process long inputs — it offers a 200,000 token context window

Choose Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

  • cost matters — it's about 1.5x cheaper per token
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2025

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Core performance indexes
22.0
#171
16.5
#211
22.1
#163
15.2
#214
-0.9
#164
5.1
#139
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
8 of 9
1 of 9
Input price
$0.50 / M
$0.20 / M
Output price
$0.50 / M
$0.70 / M
Context window
200,000
131,072

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

4 shared
Index
Kimi K2 Instruct
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
22.5#131
16.9#193
11.8#61
8.0#77
24.4#58
18.3#96
24.4#48
18.6#78
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

38 reported for Kimi K2 Instruct · 50 for Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

9 shared

Kimi K2 Instruct outperforms in 8 benchmarks (GPQA, IFEval, LiveCodeBench v6, MMLU, MMLU-Pro, MMLU-Redux, SimpleQA, SuperGPQA), while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is better at 1 benchmark (AIME 2025).

Kimi K2 Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Fri Sep 04 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Kimi K2 Instruct ($0.50/1M tokens) is 2.5x more expensive than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct ($0.20/1M tokens).

For output processing, Kimi K2 Instruct ($0.50/1M tokens) is 1.4x cheaper than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct ($0.70/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Kimi K2 Instruct is more expensive than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Fri Sep 04 2026 • llm-stats.com
Moonshot AI
Kimi K2 Instruct
Input tokens$0.50
Output tokens$0.50
Best providerFireworks
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Input tokens$0.20
Output tokens$0.70
Best providerNovita
Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

969.0B diff

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

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

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Kimi K2 Instruct accepts 200,000 input tokens compared to Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct's 131,072 tokens. Kimi K2 Instruct can generate longer responses up to 200,000 tokens, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is limited to 32,768 tokens.

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2 Instruct
Input200,000 tokens
Output200,000 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
Input131,072 tokens
Output32,768 tokens
Fri Sep 04 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct supports multimodal inputs, whereas Kimi K2 Instruct 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

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Kimi K2 Instruct 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

MIT

Open weights

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Kimi K2 Instruct was released on 2025-07-11, while Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct was released on 2025-09-22.

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is 2 months newer than Kimi K2 Instruct.

Kimi K2 Instruct

Jul 11, 2025

1.2 years ago

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

Sep 22, 2025

11 months ago

2mo 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

Provider Availability

Kimi K2 Instruct is available from Fireworks, Novita. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is available from Novita, DeepInfra.

Kimi K2 Instruct

fireworks logo
Fireworks
Input Price:Input: $0.50/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.50/1M
novita logo
Novita
Input Price:Input: $0.57/1MOutput Price:Output: $2.30/1M

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct

novita logo
Novita
Input Price:Input: $0.20/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.70/1M
deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $0.29/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.99/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion

Judge for yourself.

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

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

FAQ

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

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

Kimi K2 Instruct leads the LLM Stats Score 22.0 to 16.5. Kimi K2 Instruct 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 compare to Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct in benchmarks?

Kimi K2 Instruct scores MATH-500: 97.4%, GSM8k: 97.3%, CBNSL: 95.6%, HumanEval: 93.3%, MMLU-Redux: 92.7%. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct scores DocVQAtest: 95.0%, ScreenSpot: 94.7%, OCRBench: 90.3%, MMLU-Redux: 88.4%, MMBench-V1.1: 87.0%.

Is Kimi K2 Instruct cheaper than Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct is 2.5x cheaper for input tokens. Kimi K2 Instruct costs $0.50/M input and $0.50/M output via fireworks. Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct costs $0.20/M input and $0.70/M output via novita.

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

Kimi K2 Instruct supports 200K 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 and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (22.0 vs 16.5), context window (200K vs 131K), input pricing ($0.50 vs $0.20/M), 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 and Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct?

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