$ diff qwen-3-8 kimi-k3
Qwen 3.8 Max vs Kimi K3
Values come from Qwen 3.8 Max and Kimi K3, where each is cited to its source. This page states no benchmark result and ranks neither model — it puts two published specifications next to each other. Where a lab has not published a figure, the row says so rather than guessing.
Alibaba QwenQwen 3.8 Max
- context
- 1M
- weights
- open
- $/M in
- $2
- $/M out
- $6
- context
- 1M
- weights
- open
- $/M in
- $3
- $/M out
- $15
What actually differs
- Context window
- Identical — both accept 1M tokens, so context length is not a reason to pick either.
- Input price
- Qwen 3.8 Max at $2/M against $3/M — 1.5× cheaper to feed. Standard rates: one of these labs also quotes a lower cached-input tier, which applies only when a prefix is reused — see the full spec below.
- Output price
- Qwen 3.8 Max at $6/M against $15/M — 2.5× cheaper to generate. Output dominates the bill on most agentic workloads, where the model writes far more than it reads.
- Weights
- Both publish weights — Qwen 3.8 Max under Open-weight announced for the week of 2026-08-10; not yet shipped, Kimi K3 under Modified MIT (commercial use permitted; weights publicly downloadable). Check the licences rather than assuming they permit the same commercial use.
- Recency
- Qwen 3.8 Max shipped 18 days after Kimi K3 (2026-08-03 vs 2026-07-16).
Full spec
| Attribute | Qwen 3.8 Max | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Alibaba Qwen | Moonshot AI |
| Released | 2026-08-03 | 2026-07-16 |
| Context window | 1 million tokens | 1M tokens |
| Pricing | $2 / M input · $6 / M output | $0.30/M cache-hit input · $3.00/M cache-miss input · $15.00/M output |
| License | Open-weight announced for the week of 2026-08-10; not yet shipped | Modified MIT (commercial use permitted; weights publicly downloadable) |
| Availability | Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (global), QwenWork | Kimi Code, Kimi app, Kimi API; weights on Hugging Face (`moonshot-ai/kimi-k3`, released 2026-07-27) |