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Kimi K2.8 Preview vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Comparing Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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

Which is better?

Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

  • 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
— / M
$0.15 / M
Output price
— / M
$1.50 / M
Context window
1,048,576
65,536

Individual benchmarks

0 reported for Kimi K2.8 Preview · 23 for Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

No common benchmarks found

Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinkingdon'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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking's 65,536 tokens. Only Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking specifies output context (65,536 tokens).

Moonshot AI
Kimi K2.8 Preview
Input1,048,576 tokens
Output- tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Input65,536 tokens
Output65,536 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Kimi K2.8 Preview is licensed under a proprietary license, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Kimi K2.8 Preview was released on 2026-09-11, while Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking was released on 2025-09-10.

Kimi K2.8 Preview is 12 months newer than Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.

Kimi K2.8 Preview

Sep 11, 2026

1 weeks ago

1.0yr newer
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

Sep 10, 2025

1.0 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is available from Novita.

Kimi K2.8 Preview

moonshot logo
Unknown Organization

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking

novita logo
Novita
Input Price:Input: $0.15/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.50/1M
* 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Kimi K2.8 Preview
✓ Preferred
Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Kimi K2.8 Preview vs Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking.

Which is better, Kimi K2.8 Preview or Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Kimi K2.8 Preview (Moonshot AI) and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking (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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking in benchmarks?

Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking scores MMLU-Redux: 92.5%, IFEval: 88.9%, AIME 2025: 87.8%, WritingBench: 84.6%, MMLU-Pro: 82.7%.

What are the context window sizes for Kimi K2.8 Preview and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Kimi K2.8 Preview supports 1.0M tokens and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking supports 66K 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Key differences include context window (1.0M vs 66K), 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-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking?

Kimi K2.8 Preview is developed by Moonshot AI and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Thinking is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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