MoonshotAI Kimi K2.6 vs Qwen3.6 27B
Side by side from live data: prices, limits, who serves each model and how reliably, and how they do on our chess arena.
In short
- Qwen3.6 27B is 1.3× cheaper at a typical mix of 3 input tokens per output token.
- Both accept prompts up to 262K tokens.
- Kimi K2.6 output costs $1.80 per 1M via Chutes, against the list price of $3.41.
- Qwen3.6 27B output costs $2.00 per 1M via Chutes, against the list price of $3.20.
| Kimi K2.6 | Qwen3.6 27B | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | MoonshotAI | Qwen |
| Released | 2026-04-20 | 2026-04-27 |
| Input / 1M | $0.65 | $0.32 |
| Output / 1M | $3.41 | $3.20 |
| Cached input / 1M | $0.15 | — |
| Blended / 1M (3:1) | $1.34 | $1.04 |
| Context | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 236K | 82K |
| Accepts | text, image | text, image, video |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| Providers on OpenRouter | 17 | 7 |
| Cheapest provider, output | $1.80 | $2.00 |
| Best provider uptime, 24 h | 100% | 100% |
| Chess arena rating | 1252 ±81 | not playing |
| Vendor API status | Operational | Operational |
Cost calculator
Kimi K2.6
$90.15 per month$3.00 per day
Qwen3.6 27B
$67.20 per month$2.24 per day
Qwen3.6 27B saves $22.95 a month on this workload.
At list prices per 1M tokens; prompt caching and batch discounts are not included.
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