Kimi K1.5 Instruct vs Llama 4 Maverick Instruct: which model should you choose?
We compared Kimi K1.5 Instruct and Llama 4 Maverick Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Llama 4 Maverick Instruct has the stronger average benchmark score; Llama 4 Maverick Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Kimi K1.5 Instruct
Kimi K1.5 Instruct is a multimodal model from Moonshot AI. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $5.15 per million input tokens and $28.20 per million output tokens, and averages 80.5 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.15 / 1M
- Output
- $28.20 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 80.5
- Open weights
- Yes
Llama 4 Maverick Instruct
Llama 4 Maverick Instruct is a multimodal model from Meta AI. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $5.33 per million input tokens and $23.04 per million output tokens, and averages 81.7 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.33 / 1M
- Output
- $23.04 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 81.7
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Kimi K1.5 Instruct | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $5.15 | $5.33 | A |
| Output price / 1M | $28.20 | $23.04 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 200,000 | Tie |
| Max output | 4,096 | 16,384 | B |
| Average score | 80.5 | 81.7 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1431.8 | 1438.5 | B |
| Open weights | Yes | Yes | Tie |
Benchmark comparison
Kimi K1.5 Instruct wins 3, Llama 4 Maverick Instruct wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Kimi K1.5 Instruct | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 83.0 | 84.6 | 1.6 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| GPQA Diamond | 77.4 | 79.5 | 2.1 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| SWE-bench Verified | 67.8 | 69.1 | 1.3 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| HumanEval | 84.0 | 85.0 | 1.0 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| MATH-500 | 82.6 | 83.4 | 0.8 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| AIME 2025 | 80.4 | 79.9 | 0.5 | Kimi K1.5 Instruct |
| LiveCodeBench | 71.1 | 75.8 | 4.7 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| IFEval | 86.2 | 88.9 | 2.7 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| TruthfulQA | 84.3 | 84.0 | 0.3 | Kimi K1.5 Instruct |
| HellaSwag | 90.2 | 89.6 | 0.6 | Kimi K1.5 Instruct |
| MMMU | 78.6 | 79.0 | 0.4 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
| Arena Elo | 1431.8 | 1438.5 | 6.7 | Llama 4 Maverick Instruct |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Kimi K1.5 Instruct costs about $10.91 per million tokens and Llama 4 Maverick Instruct costs about $9.76. Llama 4 Maverick Instruct is roughly 11% cheaper than Kimi K1.5 Instruct. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Both models list a 200,000-token context window. That is enough for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Kimi K1.5 Instruct wins 3, Llama 4 Maverick Instruct wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Llama 4 Maverick Instruct leads Kimi K1.5 Instruct by 1.2 points (81.7 versus 80.5).
The price picture favours Llama 4 Maverick Instruct. The context picture is effectively a tie. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Llama 4 Maverick Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Kimi K1.5 Instruct if
- You prefer Moonshot AI's tooling or already use it.
Choose Llama 4 Maverick Instruct if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 16,384-token output limit.
FAQ
Is Kimi K1.5 Instruct better than Llama 4 Maverick Instruct?
On the index average, Llama 4 Maverick Instruct leads Kimi K1.5 Instruct by 1.2 points (81.7 versus 80.5). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Kimi K1.5 Instruct wins 3 benchmarks, Llama 4 Maverick Instruct wins 9.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K1.5 Instruct or Llama 4 Maverick Instruct?
Llama 4 Maverick Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $9.76 per million tokens, versus $10.91 for Kimi K1.5 Instruct.
Which has the larger context window?
Both models list a 200,000-token context window.
Are these models open weights?
Kimi K1.5 Instruct is open weights; Llama 4 Maverick Instruct is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Llama 4 Maverick Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.