Compare/Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs o3

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instructvso3

Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.

Kimi

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct

Input
$0/M
Output
$0/M
Speed
TTFT
OpenAI

o3

Input
$2/M
Output
$8/M
Speed
125 tok/s
TTFT
6.65s

Winner by Category

Cheaper
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Faster (tok/s)
o3
Lower Latency
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
Benchmarks (0-11)
o3

Pricing Comparison

MetricKimi Linear 48B A3B Instructo3
Input ($/M tokens)$0$2
Output ($/M tokens)$0$8
Cost for 1M input + 100K output tokens:
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct$0.00
o3$2.80

Speed Comparison

Output Speed (tokens/s) — higher is better
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
o3
125 tok/s
Time to First Token (seconds) — lower is better
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct
o3
6.65s

Benchmark Comparison

Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks

Intelligence Index
8.530.4
Coding Index
Math Index
36.388.3
GPQA Diamond
41.2%82.7%
MMLU-Pro
58.5%85.3%
LiveCodeBench
37.8%80.8%
AIME 2025
36.3%88.3%
MATH-500
99.2%
Humanity's Last Exam
2.7%20.0%
SciCode
19.9%41.0%
IFBench
28.1%71.4%
TerminalBench
11.4%37.1%
Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct0 wins
11 winso3

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is cheaper, Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct or o3?

Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.00/M tokens vs $3.50/M for o3.

Which model performs better on benchmarks?

o3 wins 11 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.

Which is faster for real-time applications?

o3 generates tokens faster at 125 tok/s vs 0 tok/s. Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct also has lower time-to-first-token (0.00s vs 6.65s).

When should I use Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct vs o3?

Choose based on your priorities: Kimi Linear 48B A3B Instruct for lower cost, o3 for stronger benchmark performance, and o3 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.