Model Comparison
Kimi K3 vs Claude Haiku 5.5
Kimi K3 (max) leads Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort) by 194 Elo, and their 95% ranges sit 114 Elo apart. Among 78 models, each ranked by its best configuration, Kimi K3 is #10 and Claude Haiku 5.5 is #16. Cost per script: $0.362 for Kimi K3 (max) and $0.103 for Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort).
Last updated , from board data generated at 01:13 UTC.
Picks and Verdict
PickKimi K3
Kimi K3 (max)
Pick Kimi K3 (max) for scripts you plan to film, since it leads Haiku's best by 194 Elo with separate ranges for $0.362 a script.
PickClaude Haiku 5.5
Claude Haiku 5.5 (xhigh)
Pick Claude Haiku 5.5 (xhigh) for cheap drafts at $0.029, since the board cannot separate it from Kimi K3 (high) at about 4.4 times the price.
At the top, Kimi K3 (max) is the clear pick: 194 Elo ahead of Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort), with ranges that don't touch. Ranked by best setting, that's the #10 model of 78 against the #16 model. On a read-through, I'd notice the hooks first, about five points higher on Kimi, then YouTube structure, more than four. Haiku has real strengths of its own: better substance, length adherence and slop scores, and slightly steadier drafts. Below the top, the board stops separating them. Kimi K3 (high) sits 31 Elo under Haiku's max effort and 51 above Haiku at xhigh, and its range overlaps both. Haiku at xhigh costs $0.029 a script against $0.128 for Kimi at high, less than a quarter of the price, for a draft the board can't tell apart. Haiku's max effort is also cheaper than Kimi at high, but it takes 12.6 minutes, the slowest setting on this page. Under xhigh, Haiku falls off fast, so I wouldn't go lower. For a script I'm filming, I'd pay $0.362 for Kimi at max. For bulk drafting, Haiku at xhigh is the better deal.
Disclosure: Claude Haiku 5.5 comes from the same lab as one of the four judges, Claude Opus 5.5. The other three sit outside its lab, so it is never scored by its own lab alone (how the panel works). The judge analysis measures how much each judge favors its own lab.
How to Read the Writing Score, Writing Elo and 95% Ranges
Writing Score and Writing Elo. The Writing Score (0 to 100) is the weighted average of the nine metric scores: seven from the judges, Length Adherence from code and the Slop Score half from each. The Writing Elo is a rating from pairwise comparisons: on each script, each configuration's average across its drafts is compared with every other configuration's, and gaps within the draft-to-draft variation count as draws. Elo rewards winning often, so the two can put configurations in a different order.
Elo ranges. Each 95% range shows how far a configuration's Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently. It comes from resampling every configuration's recorded draft scores on each reference script and ranking again. Comparing two separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between them: ranges far apart are strong evidence for the order, and overlapping ranges do not mean a tie. The reference scripts stay fixed, so the ranges say nothing about new scripts. The methodology page has the full description.
All Thinking Levels of Both Models
Every ranked configuration of Kimi K3 and Claude Haiku 5.5, scored on the same 10 scripts by the same four judges.
- Each row is one configuration: the model at one thinking level. The dot is its Writing Elo, a rating from pairwise comparisons of the scores on each script, and the bar is its 95% range: how far that Elo could move if the drafts had come out slightly differently.
- When two bars overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations. Bars far apart are strong evidence for the order.
- The table under the chart lists the same configurations in the same order and adds the Writing Score (the 0 to 100 consensus of the judges and code), cost, time and configuration rank (the place among all configurations on the board).
Shaded rows are the configurations chosen for the metric comparison below.
| Configuration | Writing Elo | 95% Range | Writing Score | Cost / Script | Time / Script | Reasoning Tokens | Configuration Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kimi K3 (max) | 2203 | 2158 to 2243 | 82.2 | $0.362 | 9.9 min | 18,568 | #20 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort) | 2009 | 1972 to 2044 | 80.8 | $0.103 | 12.6 min | N/A | #31 |
| Kimi K3 (high) | 1978 | 1936 to 2029 | 80.3 | $0.128 | 2.8 min | 3,081 | #37 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 (xhigh) | 1927 | 1883 to 1965 | 80.0 | $0.029 | 3.6 min | N/A | #41 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 (high) | 1723 | 1679 to 1760 | 78.0 | $0.012 | 1.5 min | N/A | #53 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 (medium) | 1620 | 1572 to 1670 | 76.7 | $0.0067 | 0.8 min | N/A | #62 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 (low) | 1504 | 1461 to 1550 | 75.2 | $0.0045 | 0.5 min | N/A | #74 |
Cost is one script at the API list price of the route used, uncached and without judging. Time is the average for one accepted script, retries included. N/A under Reasoning Tokens means the board has no separate reasoning count for that route.
Computed Findings Across Thinking Levels
Each finding is computed from the configurations above. Where two 95% ranges overlap, the board cannot order those two configurations.
- Best Configurations Head to Head. Kimi K3 (max) leads Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort) by 194 Elo, and their 95% ranges do not overlap (2158 to 2243 against 1972 to 2044), which is strong evidence for that order.
- Lowest Thinking Levels Head to Head. At their lowest thinking levels, Kimi K3 (high) at Elo 1978 and $0.128 per script leads Claude Haiku 5.5 (low) at Elo 1504 and $0.0045 per script by 474 Elo. Their 95% ranges do not overlap.
- Same Level Name, Side by Side. Kimi K3 has the higher Writing Elo at every level name both models use: high and max. The 95% ranges do not overlap at any of them. Level names come from each provider, so the same name does not promise the same reasoning budget.
- Cheapest Kimi K3 Configuration Above Claude Haiku 5.5's Best. The cheapest Kimi K3 configuration with a higher Writing Elo than Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort), at Elo 2009 and $0.103 per script, is Kimi K3 (max), at Elo 2203 and $0.362 per script. It costs about 3.5 times as much per script.
- Lowest to Highest Thinking Level. Kimi K3 moves +225 Elo from high to max, at about 2.8 times the cost per script. Claude Haiku 5.5 moves +505 Elo from low to max effort, at about 23 times the cost per script.
Writing Elo at Each Shared Level Name
| Level | Kimi K3 | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Gap | 95% Ranges |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| high | 1978 | 1723 | +255 | Separate |
| max | 2203 | 2009 | +194 | Separate |
Gap is Kimi K3 minus Claude Haiku 5.5 at the same level name, using each model's highest-rated configuration at that level.
Two Chosen Configurations Compared
Pick one configuration of each model to compare their metric scores, consistency across drafts and per-script scores. Each menu starts on the model's best configuration.
Scores by Metric
Kimi K3 (max) scores higher on five of the nine metrics and Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort) on four. Weighted by each metric's share of the Writing Score, YouTube Best Practices does the most to put Kimi K3 (max) ahead, with a 4.4-point lead on that metric. The weight beside each metric is its share of the Writing Score.
Consistency Across Drafts
| Kimi K3 (max) | Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort) | |
|---|---|---|
| Score spread across drafts (±) | 1.68 | 1.55 |
| Lowest script score | 80.0 Script 10 | 78.2 Script 10 |
| Highest script score | 83.8 Script 9 | 82.6 Script 4 |
| Range across scripts | 3.8 | 4.4 |
Spread is how much the Writing Score moves between a configuration's drafts, and lower is steadier. Green marks the better number in each row.
Scores by Script
Writing Score on each reference script. Gap is Kimi K3 (max) minus Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort), and the higher score is in bold.
| Script | Kimi K3 (max) | Claude Haiku 5.5 (max effort) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Script 1 opinion / warning explainer | 81.4 | 80.3 | +1.1 |
| Script 2 news-analysis / skeptical explainer | 82.6 | 80.7 | +1.9 |
| Script 3 personal roadmap / opinion | 81.8 | 80.8 | +1.0 |
| Script 4 short explainer | 80.1 | 82.6 | -2.5 |
| Script 5 news-analysis / opinion explainer | 83.4 | 81.7 | +1.7 |
| Script 6 founder announcement / personal origin story | 83.2 | 81.1 | +2.1 |
| Script 7 personal technical walkthrough / agentic workflow case study | 83.6 | 80.0 | +3.6 |
| Script 8 product release announcement / personal observation | 82.3 | 81.3 | +1.0 |
| Script 9 career guide / hiring analysis | 83.8 | 81.5 | +2.3 |
| Script 10 engineering process walkthrough / presentation adaptation | 80.0 | 78.2 | +1.8 |
Scorecards and Thinking Pages
Each configuration name in the table above opens its own scorecard.
Compare With Another Model
Pick a second model. A pair with its own written match-up opens that page, and any other pair opens in the comparison tool.
Nearby Match-Ups by Best Writing Elo
Every configuration wrote five drafts for each of the same 10 briefs, from the same prompt. Generation was closed-book, with the prompt as the only source and no web search or other tools. Each judge scores every draft once: Claude Opus 5.5 at medium effort through the Claude Code subscription, GPT-6.1 Sol at medium reasoning through the Codex CLI, GLM 5.3 Flash through OpenRouter, and Jev 1.13, a typed judge from TypeSafe that answers each metric as a multiple-choice question. The channel's finished script is their reference for the voice, and it gets no score on the board itself.
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