Models

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking vs Kimi K3

Output tokens cost $15.00 per million on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and $15.00 per million on Kimi K3. Input tokens cost $3.00 per million on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and $3.00 per million on Kimi K3. Cached input tokens are billed at $0.30 per million on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and $0.30 per million on Kimi K3. Context lengths are 200,000 tokens on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and 1,048,576 tokens on Kimi K3. Time to first token (TTFT) measured on AIHubMix is 1.2s on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and 0.9s on Kimi K3. Measured output throughput is 67.8 tok/s on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and 73.1 tok/s on Kimi K3. On the LMArena coding leaderboard Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking scores 1528 and Kimi K3 scores 1531.

AnthropicClaude Sonnet 4.6 ThinkingMoonshot AIKimi K3
Anthropic logo
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking
Anthropic · image, text → text

Claude sonnet 4.6 does not enable reasoning mode by default. To access its deep reasoning capabilities, users would typically need to call the native Claude API. To make this capability available through an OpenAI-compatible interface, we provide the claude-sonnet-4-6-think model, which has reasoning mode pre-enabled and a default 32k-token context window, allowing it to be called directly via the OpenAI unified API. Claude sonnet 4.5 Think is a reasoning-focused variant of Claude sonnet 4.6 designed for advanced tasks that require rigorous reasoning, complex decision-making, and long-chain analysis. Aside from its enhanced reasoning mechanism, all other capabilities remain consistent with the standard Claude sonnet 4.6 model, making it well suited for complex engineering problem decomposition, multi-stage planning, and logic-intensive analysis.

Input$3.00 /M
Output$15.00 /M
Moonshot AI logo
Kimi K3
Moonshot AI · text, image, video → text

Kimi K3 is Kimi’s flagship model for long-horizon coding and end-to-end knowledge work, with a 1M-token context window and industry-leading intelligence.

Input$3.00 /M
Output$15.00 /M

Pricing & Specifications

Prices are per million tokens. Time to First Token and throughput are rolling averages measured on AIHubMix.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking
Kimi K3
Input /M
$3.00
$3.00
Output /M
$15.00
$15.00
Cache read /M
$0.30
$0.30
Context length
200,000
1,048,576
Max output
32,000
1,048,576
Time to First Token
1.2 s
0.9 s
Throughput
67.8 tok/s
73.1 tok/s
Modalities
imagetext
textimagevideo
Supported Parameters
thinkingtoolsfunction callingstructured outputs
thinkingfunction callingstructured outputs
API Formats
Released
-
-

Promotional prices show the discounted rate; see each model page for promotion windows.

Activity Past 30 Days

Daily traffic served through AIHubMix — how demand for each model is trending.

claude-sonnet-4-6-thinkkimi-k3

Tokens / day

-

Requests / day

-

Performance Past 3 Days

Measured on real AIHubMix traffic, hourly buckets. Gaps mean no traffic in that hour.

claude-sonnet-4-6-thinkkimi-k3

Throughput (tok/s)

-

TTFT (s)

-

Uptime (%)

-

LMArena Benchmarks

LMArena ratings by capability (Bradley-Terry, commonly called Elo). Higher is better.

Text
claude-sonnet-4-6-thinkkimi-k3
1420146015001540
Overall
14721486
Coding
15281531
Math
14631463
Hard prompts
15031505
Instruction following
14761479
Multi-turn
14811499
Creative writing
14501470
Longer query
14931502
Chinese
15101527
English
14841491

Source: LMArena (arena.ai) leaderboard, imported by AIHubMix. Models without published ratings are omitted per chart.

Cost calculator

Estimate your monthly bill for the same workload on each model.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking
$405 /mo
Kimi K3
$405 /mo

Monthly = daily × 30. Discounted rates applied where a promotion is active.

FAQ

Which is cheaper: Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking, Kimi K3?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking: $15.00/M output tokens; Kimi K3: $15.00/M. Use the cost calculator above to estimate your own workload.

How do their coding arena scores compare?

Kimi K3: 1531; Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking: 1528 (LMArena coding leaderboard).

Which responds faster?

Kimi K3: 0.9s time to first token measured on AIHubMix; see the live performance charts above for how each model behaves across the day.

How large is each context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking accepts 200,000 and Kimi K3 accepts 1,048,576 input tokens. Maximum output per request is 32,000 tokens on Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and 1,048,576 tokens on Kimi K3.

Which one generates tokens faster?

Kimi K3 at 73.1 tok/s and Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking at 67.8 tok/s, measured as output throughput on AIHubMix — a separate metric from time to first token.

What inputs and capabilities does each model support?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking accepts image and text input and supports thinking, tool calling, function calling and structured outputs; Kimi K3 accepts text, image and video input and supports thinking, function calling and structured outputs.

Can I call Claude Sonnet 4.6 Thinking and Kimi K3 with the same API key?

Yes. AIHubMix serves every model on this page behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so switching between them is a one-line change to the model field — no second account, key or SDK.

Popular comparisons

Related model match-ups readers also look at.