Self-hosting and data control
Choose Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 has open weights, so you can run it on your own servers; Grok Build 0.1 is only available through its provider.
Choose Grok Build 0.1 for images as input and the latest release. Choose Kimi K2.6 for self-hosting and data control.
Each answer below comes straight from the published prices, specifications and independent benchmark results.
Choose Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 has open weights, so you can run it on your own servers; Grok Build 0.1 is only available through its provider.
Choose Grok Build 0.1
Grok Build 0.1 accepts images as input; Kimi K2.6 does not.
Choose Grok Build 0.1
Grok Build 0.1 is the newer release (May 2026, against Apr 20, 2026 for Kimi K2.6).
| Grok Build 0.1 | Kimi K2.6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Moonshot AI |
| Category | Language models | Language models |
| Status | Generally available | Legacy |
| Headline price | $1.25 / 1M tokens | No data |
| Input | $1.00 / 1M tokens | No data |
| Output | $2.00 / 1M tokens | No data |
| Cached input | $0.20 / 1M tokens | No data |
| Context window | 256k | 256k |
| Max output | No data | No data |
| Released | May 2026 | Apr 20, 2026 |
| Knowledge cutoff | No data | No data |
| Licence | Proprietary | Open weights |
| Capabilities | Vision, Reasoning, Tool calling, Structured output, Prompt caching, Batch API | Tool calling |
| API model id | grok-build-0.1 | kimi-k2.6 |
Leader in bold.
| Benchmark | Grok Build 0.1 | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence Index | No data | 27 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard | No data | 43.9% |
| SciCode | No data | 51.5% |
| GPQA Diamond | No data | 91.1% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | No data | 37.5% |
| IFBench (instruction following) | No data | 76% |
| τ²-Bench (agentic tool use) | No data | 95.9% |
| MMMU-Pro (visual reasoning) | No data | 79.4% |
| Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR) | No data | 81% |
Independent evaluations by Artificial Analysis, run the same way for every model, at the reasoning setting shown. Percentages unless marked as an index.
Choose Grok Build 0.1 for images as input and the latest release. Choose Kimi K2.6 for self-hosting and data control.
A price comparison is not possible: one of them has no comparable published price.
Both accept 256k tokens per request.
Grok Build 0.1 is made by xAI and Kimi K2.6 by Moonshot AI. A price comparison is not possible: one of them has no comparable published price. Both accept 256k tokens per request. Grok Build 0.1 is the newer model (May 2026, against Apr 20, 2026). Only Grok Build 0.1 offers vision, reasoning, structured output, prompt caching, batch api.
Grok Build 0.1 was released on May 2026 and Kimi K2.6 on Apr 20, 2026.