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Kimi K2.8 Preview vs Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

Comparing Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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

Which is better?

Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.

Kimi K2.8 Preview also accepts a larger context window (1,048,576 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 K2.8 Preview

  • you process long inputs — it offers a 1,048,576 token context window
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Sep 2026

Choose Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

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

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Kimi K2.8 Preview
Moonshot AI
Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
$0.30 / M
Output price
— / M
$1.00 / M
Context window
1,048,576
262,144

Individual benchmarks

0 reported for Kimi K2.8 Preview · 10 for Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

No common benchmarks found

Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instructdon'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

Kimi K2.8 Preview accepts 1,048,576 input tokens compared to Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct's 262,144 tokens. Only Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct specifies output context (262,144 tokens).

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2.8 Preview
Input1,048,576 tokens
Output- tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct
Input262,144 tokens
Output262,144 tokens
Sun Sep 20 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Kimi K2.8 Preview supports multimodal inputs, whereas Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct does not.

Kimi K2.8 Preview can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Kimi K2.8 Preview

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Kimi K2.8 Preview is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

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

Kimi K2.8 Preview

Proprietary

Closed source

Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Kimi K2.8 Preview was released on 2026-09-11, while Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct was released on 2025-01-31.

Kimi K2.8 Preview is 20 months newer than Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct.

Kimi K2.8 Preview

Sep 11, 2026

1 weeks ago

1.6yr newer
Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

Jan 31, 2025

1.6 years ago

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 K2.8 Preview is available from Moonshot AI. Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct is available from DeepInfra.

Kimi K2.8 Preview

moonshot logo
Unknown Organization

Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct

deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $0.30/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.00/1M
* 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 K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Kimi K2.8 Preview
✓ Preferred
Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Kimi K2.8 Preview vs Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct.

Which is better, Kimi K2.8 Preview or Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct?

Kimi K2.8 Preview (Moonshot AI) and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct (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 K2.8 Preview compare to Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct in benchmarks?

Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct scores TAU-bench Retail: 77.5%, SWE-Bench Verified: 69.6%, BFCL-v3: 68.7%, Aider-Polyglot: 61.8%, TAU-bench Airline: 60.0%.

What are the context window sizes for Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct?

Kimi K2.8 Preview supports 1.0M tokens and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct supports 262K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct?

Key differences include context window (1.0M vs 262K), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Proprietary vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct?

Kimi K2.8 Preview is developed by Moonshot AI and Qwen3-Coder 480B A35B Instruct is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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