Performance Benchmarks for kimi-k2.5-thinking

Analyze how kimi-k2.5-thinking stacks up against other frontier models in terms of cost-to-performance and raw intelligence (LMArena Elo).

2026 Performance Summary

🚀 Intelligence (Elo): 1450
💰 API Cost (Input): $4.5e-7 / 1M tokens
⚡ API Cost (Output): $0.00000225 / 1M tokens
⏱️ Real-world Throughput: 25 tokens/s

Analysis: While kimi-k2.5-thinking is a capable model, it is currently outperformed in efficiency by hy4-preview. hy4-preview sits higher on the Pareto line, offering approximately 183 points more intelligence (Elo) for a comparable or lower API cost.

Highly Recommended Alternatives

Frontier Model	LMArena Elo	API Cost (1M)	Throughput
hy4-preview	1633	$8.34e-7	23
gemini-3.8-flash-high	1495	$7.5e-7	86
kimi-k3-max	1488	$6.2e-7	66
mimo-v2.6-pro	1480	$4.35e-7	36
glm-5.3-max	1478	$7e-8	93

*These models represent the Pareto Frontier (optimal cost-to-performance).*