Comment by senko
6 days ago
For the web app task I mentioned:
* Kimi K3: 9532k input (9172k cached), 114k output - cost $5.5
* Qwen 3.8 Max: 18020k input (17836k cached), 114k output - cost $6.3
* Fable: ~14m input (all cached??), 196k output - cost $30
Correction on my earlier post, Kimi was through Pi, not Kimi Code. For Qwen I used Qwen Code and for Fable I used Claude Code.
Not sure wtf is going on with the Fable stats (a lot tokens, virtuall all of them were cached - I guess heavy system prompt?) but both claude code stats and ccusage tool output match.
Would a fairer test not be to use the same harness for all three? I’d suspect the harness to massively affect token use and optimisation
Yes and no. It would make the test fair but it would also mean losing any optimizations the vendors have made specifically for their model. They're all trained differently so they should be used differently to get maximum benefit. It makes sense to use each vendor's harness to get the most of their models, and compare the results that way. Additionally, it's not easy to use all the models in all the harnesses. Anthropic's subscription only covers claude code for example.
I don’t know that the methodology of the experiment is testing what it intends to test. With the current method we’re essentially testing each AI lab’s ability to efficiently extract data from their version of a transformer model.
To objectively test all models the harness would need to be the same and ideally independent. Failing that, all three models should be tested in all three harnesses and the output verified on a model x harness level and on an overall aggregated model x all harnesses level.
> I’d suspect the harness to massively affect token use and optimisation
Yes they do according to databricks -> https://www.databricks.com/blog/benchmarking-coding-agents-d...
That's why I find comparing models on benchmarks only gives the tendency. We should be comparing model x harness to have accurate metrics.
Agreed. An experiment is only as accurate as the methodology is sound.
Testing each lab’s model in its own harness just tells us how well the lab has performed. For the model’s performance we need a control and the only way to get the control is to either test all models in all harnesses or all models in the same harness
> or the web app task I mentioned:
* Kimi K3: (...) cost $6.3
* Fable: (...) cost $30
It's pretty clear that Kimi K3 beats Fable by a long margin.