The Known Good Updated 29 Jul 2026
Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ·Google vs Moonshot AI

Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash vs MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — head-to-head comparison

Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash profile MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 profile All comparisons
Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash — Google
Quality
#3 of 62
95based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#25 of 317
126.1
Output tokens per second
Price
#281 of 370
$3.38
Blended per 1M tokens
In $1.50 · Out $9.00
Cache hit price
#153 of 238
$0.15
per 1M tokens (−90%)
Context
#58 of 375
1.05M
tokens (~1,600 pages)
MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — Moonshot AI
Quality
#7 of 62
93based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Known Good Index
Speed
#122 of 317
58.8
Output tokens per second
Price
#225 of 370
$1.16
Blended per 1M tokens
In $0.65 · Out $2.72
Cache hit price
#119 of 238
$0.11
per 1M tokens (−83%)
Context
#199 of 375
262k
tokens (~400 pages)
Summary

On the Known Good Index, Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash scores 95 and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 scores 93 — a 2-point lead for Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash. They share 3 published evaluations, with Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash ahead on 2 and MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 ahead on 1.

Blended pricing is $3.38 per 1M tokens for Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash and $1.16 for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 — MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is about 2.9× cheaper.

Throughput is 126 tokens per second for Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash and 59 for MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6, with time to first token at 1.8s and 1.4s. Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash accepts 1.05M tokens of context against 262k.

Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash is proprietary; MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 is open weights under Open weights (unrestricted). 24 tracked hosts serve one or both.

Generated from tracked data on 29 Jul 2026 · how these comparisons are computed →

At a glance
MetricGoogle: Gemini 3.5 FlashMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Known Good Index 95 based on 3 of 7 evaluations 93 based on 3 of 7 evaluations
Blended $/1M $3.38 $1.16
Output tok/s 126 59
Context window 1.05M 262k
Providers 2 22
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Quality

Known Good Index and the capability indices, side by side

Index scores

Each index is min-max normalised across tracked models and scaled 0–100 from published evaluations. We do not run these evaluations.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3.5 FlashMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Known Good Index 95 93
Mathematics Index 96 96
Agentic Index 92 87
Openness Index 5 60
The Known Good

Quality Breakdown

Every evaluation both models report a published score for

Evaluations both models report

Bar = Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash · marker = MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 · scores ingested from Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)

GPQA Diamond93 / 91
Mock AIME 2024–2596 / 96
SWE-bench Verified79 / 77

Right-hand figures read Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash / MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6. Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash leads on 2 of 3, MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 on 1.

The Known Good

Arena Elo

Human preference rating from blind pairwise votes

Arena ratings

Elo from blind pairwise votes, ingested from Arena. Higher is better.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3.5 FlashMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Text Arena 1,455
Text Arena (style controlled) 1,461
The Known Good

Price & Cost

Published API pricing by token type

Published pricing

USD per 1M tokens. Blended is a 3:1 input:output mix. Live from OpenRouter, cross-checked against models.dev. Lower is better.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3.5 FlashMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Input $/1M $1.50 $0.65
Output $/1M $9.00 $2.72
Blended $/1M $3.38 $1.16
Cache read $/1M $0.150 $0.109
The Known Good
We publish blended price rather than cost-per-task. Cost-per-task requires token counts from an evaluation suite we do not run. Blended price is computed from published rates and is fully reproducible — see the pricing methodology.

Context Window

Maximum input accepted and maximum output emitted

Context and output limits

Provider-declared limits, from metadata via models.dev and OpenRouter. Higher is better.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3.5 FlashMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Context window 1.05M 262k
Max output tokens 66k 262k
The Known Good

Speed & Latency

Median throughput and time to first token across hosting providers

Output speedTime to first token
Throughput and latency

Medians across all tracked providers, derived from OpenRouter endpoint telemetry.

MetricGoogle: Gemini 3.5 FlashMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6
Output tokens/s 126 59
Time to first token 1.8s 1.4s
The Known Good

Providers

Which hosts serve each model, and at what price and speed

24 hosts
Full provider benchmarks →
Provider Google: Gemini 3.5 Flash blendedGoogle: Gemini 3.5 Flash tok/s MoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 blendedMoonshotAI: Kimi K2.6 tok/s
Google AI Studio $1.69 191
Google · first party $1.69 108
Together $2.02 138
CoreWeave $1.34 135
Parasail $1.44 128
BaseTen $1.71 127
Fireworks $1.71 86
Decart $1.34 76
ModelRun $1.38 76
Cloudflare $1.71 56
Inceptron $1.30 52
DigitalOcean $1.37 51
Crusoe $1.40 50
Phala $1.97 42
Baidu · first party $1.16 42
Chutes $1.37 42
DeepInfra $1.44 38
Venice $1.44 36
AtlasCloud $1.71 34
SiliconFlow $1.43 34
Novita $1.45 31
StreamLake $1.54 31
Moonshot AI · first party $1.71 23
Sail Research $1.75 6

Per-host pricing and telemetry from OpenRouter. A dash means that host does not serve that model.

The Known Good
Sources for this page
Pricing & providers — OpenRouter Metadata — models.dev Benchmarks — Epoch AI (CC-BY 4.0)Elo — Arena Full attribution →