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Kimi K2 Instruct vs Qwen4-Max-Preview

Comparing Kimi K2 Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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

Which is better?

Kimi K2 Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.

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

Choose Kimi K2 Instruct

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Choose Qwen4-Max-Preview

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Kimi K2 Instruct
Moonshot AI
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.50 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.50 / M
— / M
Context window
200,000
—

Individual benchmarks

38 reported for Kimi K2 Instruct · 0 for Qwen4-Max-Preview

No common benchmarks found

Kimi K2 Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Previewdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Only Kimi K2 Instruct specifies input context (200,000 tokens). Only Kimi K2 Instruct specifies output context (200,000 tokens).

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2 Instruct
Input200,000 tokens
Output200,000 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Fri Nov 13 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen4-Max-Preview supports multimodal inputs, whereas Kimi K2 Instruct does not.

Qwen4-Max-Preview can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Kimi K2 Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Kimi K2 Instruct is licensed under MIT, while Qwen4-Max-Preview uses a proprietary license.

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

Kimi K2 Instruct

MIT

Open weights

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Kimi K2 Instruct was released on 2025-07-11, while Qwen4-Max-Preview was released on 2026-11-11.

Qwen4-Max-Preview is 16 months newer than Kimi K2 Instruct.

Kimi K2 Instruct

Jul 11, 2025

1.3 years ago

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Nov 11, 2026

1 days ago

1.3yr 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?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Kimi K2 Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Kimi K2 Instruct
✓ Preferred
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Kimi K2 Instruct vs Qwen4-Max-Preview.

Which is better, Kimi K2 Instruct or Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Kimi K2 Instruct (Moonshot AI) and Qwen4-Max-Preview (Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team) each have strengths in different areas. Compare their benchmark scores, pricing, context windows, and capabilities above to determine which fits your needs.

How does Kimi K2 Instruct compare to Qwen4-Max-Preview in benchmarks?

Kimi K2 Instruct scores MATH-500: 97.4%, GSM8k: 97.3%, CBNSL: 95.6%, HumanEval: 93.3%, MMLU-Redux: 92.7%.

What are the context window sizes for Kimi K2 Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Kimi K2 Instruct supports 200K tokens and Qwen4-Max-Preview supports an unknown number of 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 Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Key differences include multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (MIT vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Kimi K2 Instruct and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Kimi K2 Instruct is developed by Moonshot AI and Qwen4-Max-Preview is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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