Towards AITowards AIToneBench

Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.7 Max (high)

Should you write with Kimi K3 or Qwen3.7 Max (high)? On this page the only thing that changes is the model. Both wrote their own version of the scripts behind 10 of my What's AI videos, five drafts per script, and three judges from three model families scored every draft blind, with my finished script as the reference. Kimi K3 leads overall, 88.5 to 80.8.

Kimi K3
#21 Elo 2217 · 88.5/100
Qwen3.7 Max (high)
#89 Elo 1525 · 80.8/100
Cost / script
$0.260 vs $0.055
Human baseline
90.9 Kimi K3 falls below it · Qwen3.7 Max (high) falls below it

The verdict

Kimi K3 is in a different class from Qwen3.7 Max (high) for scripts. It's #21, Qwen is #89, and Kimi wins all nine metrics. The widest gaps are voice and continuity, around nine points each, exactly the two things I built this benchmark to catch: does it sound like a person, and does each paragraph lead to the next. The high reasoning setting doesn't buy Qwen much either; it sits a few places below the default Qwen3.7 Max. Kimi is open weights; Qwen isn't. What Qwen3.7 Max (high) has going for it is price, roughly $0.055 a script against $0.260, and it's done in under two minutes.

Pick Kimi K3 when the script has to sound like a person and flow from paragraph to paragraph.
Pick Qwen3.7 Max (high) only when the lowest price per script outweighs voice and flow.

How to read these numbers

Overall vs Elo. Overall is the weighted rubric score. Elo compares each model's five-draft average with every other model's, script by script, and counts gaps inside run-to-run noise as draws, so it rewards winning often and can disagree with overall. My own scripts score 90.9 on the same rubric, not a literal 100. Right now 2 of 167 ranked configurations reach it. A model above that line writes at that level on this rubric. That's not the same as beating my script line for line.

Reading the Elo intervals. Each 95% range comes from resampling every model's recorded run scores on each task and re-ranking. Comparing these separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between two models: far apart is strong evidence, and overlap isn't a tie. The tasks stay fixed, so the ranges say nothing about new tasks (the long version).

Metric by metric: where the gap comes from

Blue is Kimi K3, orange is Qwen3.7 Max (high), and the solid bar takes the metric. The weight under each name is how much it counts toward the overall. Weighted by how much each metric counts, Tone & Voice Match does the most to put Kimi K3 ahead: it leads there by 9.3 points. If you care about one thing, say voice or length, go straight to that row.

Tone & Voice Match19% weight
88.4
79.1
Writing Craft & Clarity13% weight
89.0
80.7
Substance, Accuracy & Value15% weight
87.6
79.8
Continuity & Emotion14% weight
87.6
79.0
YouTube Best Practices12% weight
88.4
81.7
Hook Strength10% weight
89.2
84.0
Length Adherence8% weight
90.1
82.3
Slop Score (EQ-Bench + ours)5% weight
91.2
86.1
Visual Cue Quality4% weight
85.1
78.2

Cost, speed, and consistency

Quality is half the decision. The other half is what each script costs you, how long you wait, and how often you get a bad draft. The lead has a price: Kimi K3 costs about 4.7x as much per script as Qwen3.7 Max (high).

Kimi K3Qwen3.7 Max (high)
Overall / 10088.580.8
Writing Elo22171525
Score spread across drafts (± overall std)1.2602.190
Cost per script (USD)0.2600.055
Avg time per script (min)3.91.7
Open weightsYesNo

Green wins the row, and for spread, cost and time, lower wins. Cost is one script at recorded list prices, uncached and without judging, so your real bill will differ. Spread is how much the overall score moves across a model's drafts, and time is the average time to get one accepted script, retries included.

Want the script-by-script detail? Full scorecards: Kimi K3 · Qwen3.7 Max (high). The whole scoring pipeline is on the methodology page.

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