Ember-1 Tested Faster and Cheaper Than Kimi K3

Benchmarks by @kickingkeys show Ember-1, derived from Kimi K3, uses far fewer thinking tokens (up to 9x less), runs faster and costs about half as much, though traces of the base model still appear in some outputs.

2026-10-02 ~ 2026-10-02 · 2 related posts

• Ember-1 vs Kimi K3 test: 9x fewer thinking tokens, 4x faster, half the cost for near-identical output — sophiamyang · 2026-10-02
• Ember-1 (distilled from Kimi K3) tested: ~20% cheaper, 36% less reasoning tokens, 2x faster — sophiamyang · 2026-10-02