Pareto 26.9 vs Kimi K3
Pareto 26.9 took 10 min 32 s and $0.34 at list price, Kimi K3 took 22 min 52 s and $1.92 at list price. Kimi K3 took 2.2× as long and cost 5.7× as much.
Pareto 26.9
Unbiased · $7.50/M out
Kimi K3
Moonshot AI · $15.00/M out · 9,870 HN pts
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a small workshop in the heart of Rotterdam, where three people spend their days elbow-deep in the guts of vintage synthesizers. We fix the machines that made the sounds you grew up with—the ones that shaped entire genres and then got left in basements when the tech moved on. But we're not a museum. Our benches are covered in solder, schematics, and the occasional broken key that's been there for two weeks longer than we'd like to admit.
We started this studio because we got tired of seeing classic gear being stripped for parts, or worse, turned into Instagram decor. These instruments deserve better. They were built to make noise, and we want to keep them doing exactly that.
Between the three of us, we've fixed everything from a 1960s Buchla to a beat-up Juno that fell down a flight of stairs. If you've got a synth that's gone quiet, bring it in. We'll bring it back.
Patchbay is a small workshop in Rotterdam where old synthesizers come back to life. We are three people — a former recording engineer, a self-taught circuit obsessive, and a classically trained pianist who fell in love with broken machines — and between us we have spent decades coaxing sound out of equipment the rest of the world gave up on.
We started Patchbay because we kept meeting the same problem: beloved instruments sitting silent in attics and studio corners, written off as unfixable. A Juno with a dead voice chip. A Prophet that drifts out of tune. A Moog that hums when it shouldn't. To us, none of these are lost causes. They are instruments with history in them, and they deserve careful hands, original parts where possible, and honest work.
Every synth that leaves our bench is played, tested, and listened to — because that is what it was made for.
Specs and numbers
| Pareto 26.9 | Kimi K3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Unbiased | Moonshot AI |
| Made in | — | China |
| Released | 13 Oct 2026 | 16 Jul 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.50 | $0.192 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $7.50 | $15.00 |
| Context | 262,144 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | — | 9,870 |
| Time for the six prompts | 10 min 32 s | 22 min 52 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.34 | $1.92 |
Pareto 26.9 was cheaper: $1.58 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Pareto 26.9 was faster: 12 min 20 s less in total, and faster on 5 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play. Pareto 26.9's landing page was cut off at the output limit (12,000 tokens).
Rebuild this screen experiment: Kimi K3's rebuild matched the screenshot at 68%; Pareto 26.9 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Kimi K3's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Pareto 26.9 was not in it.