Kimi K3 vs Fable Coding Comparison

ssh4net · x · 2026-07-19

Benchmarked on a real bug in Cline using the same harness: both **Kimi K3** and **Fable 5** can fix the issue, but with different strengths. - **Fable 5 is faster**: total time **3.5 minutes**, **18** tool calls; Kimi K3 took **12 minutes**, **34** tool calls. - **Kimi K3 is cheaper**: used **1.2M** tokens, costing **$0.92**; Fable 5 used **730K** tokens, costing **$2.13**. - The author believes the traces show Kimi is more like a model trained with reinforcement learning, spending more tokens on thinking and verification. - Conclusion: this is the first time they've seen an **open-weight model** genuinely compete head-to-head with SOTA in a real coding-agent scenario.

Related event: Kimi K3 Evaluations Show Polarized Results and Harness Sensitivity(5 posts)→

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