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Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Kimi K2 Thinking

2 vs 0 benchmarks won

Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Moonshot AI
Kimi K2 Thinking
Overview
CompanyAnthropicMoonshot AI
Release dateFeb 17 2026Nov 6 2025
Model type
Open sourceNoYes
Specifications
Parameters
1T
Context window
256k
Benchmarks
Science reasoning
GPQA Diamond
89.9%
Software engineering
SWE-Bench Verified
79.6%
71.3%
Multimodal understanding
MMMU
Timeline
Release gapKimi K2 Thinking shipped 103 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6

Which is better: Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K2 Thinking?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads Kimi K2 Thinking on 2 of the tracked benchmarks (GPQA Diamond, SWE-Bench Verified, MMMU). Kimi K2 Thinking shipped 103 days before Claude Sonnet 4.6, so benchmark comparisons should account for the intervening progress.

Kimi K2 Thinking is an open-source / open-weight model; Claude Sonnet 4.6 is proprietary.

On SWE-Bench Verified, Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores 79.6%, 8.3 points above Kimi K2 Thinking at 71.3%.

Frequently asked questions

When was Claude Sonnet 4.6 released?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 was released by Anthropic on Feb 17 2026.
When was Kimi K2 Thinking released?
Kimi K2 Thinking was released by Moonshot AI on Nov 6 2025.
Which is better at coding, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K2 Thinking?
On SWE-Bench Verified (real-world software-engineering tasks), Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads — Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores 79.6% and Kimi K2 Thinking scores 71.3%.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Kimi K2 Thinking open source?
Kimi K2 Thinking is an open-source / open-weight model released by Moonshot AI. Claude Sonnet 4.6 is a proprietary model released by Anthropic.

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