Living systematic review

KV-cache compression

Cutting the memory and bandwidth cost of the transformer key-value cache in long-context LLM inference — token eviction, quantization/low-rank, offload/reuse, and head/layer-adaptive budgeting.

264 papers613 critique receipts2,449 benchmark resultsupdated Jun 18, 2026

Most-superseded baselines

Ranked by how many distinct papers critique or beat each method — the standard baselines newer work routinely measures against.

  1. 1
    SnapKV

    SnapKV: LLM Knows What You are Looking for Before Generation

    51 critique · 71 beaten on benchmarks

  2. 2
    H2Oin SnapKV

    H$_2$O: Heavy-Hitter Oracle for Efficient Generative Inference of Large Language Models

    65 critique · 56 beaten on benchmarks

  3. 3
    StreamingLLMin SnapKV

    Efficient Streaming Language Models with Attention Sinks

    43 critique · 44 beaten on benchmarks

  4. 4
    PyramidKVin SnapKV

    PyramidKV: Dynamic KV Cache Compression based on Pyramidal Information Funneling

    21 critique · 29 beaten on benchmarks

  5. 5
    KIVI

    KIVI: A Tuning-Free Asymmetric 2bit Quantization for KV Cache

    20 critique · 27 beaten on benchmarks

  6. 6
    Quest

    Quest: Query-Aware Sparsity for Efficient Long-Context LLM Inference

    13 critique · 16 beaten on benchmarks

  7. 7
    TOVAin SnapKV

    Transformers are Multi-State RNNs

    6 critique · 14 beaten on benchmarks

  8. 8
    AdaKVin SnapKV

    Ada-KV: Optimizing KV Cache Eviction by Adaptive Budget Allocation for Efficient LLM Inference

    7 critique · 7 beaten on benchmarks

  9. 9
    CaMin SnapKV

    6 critique · 6 beaten on benchmarks

  10. 10
    KVQuantin KIVI

    KVQuant: Towards 10 Million Context Length LLM Inference with KV Cache Quantization

    6 critique · 6 beaten on benchmarks

  11. 11
    TurboQuantin KIVI

    TurboQuant: Online Vector Quantization with Near-optimal Distortion Rate

    7 critique · 4 beaten on benchmarks

  12. 12
    Scissorhandsin SnapKV

    Scissorhands: Exploiting the Persistence of Importance Hypothesis for LLM KV Cache Compression at Test Time

    8 critique · 3 beaten on benchmarks

The competition

Methods that fight on the same benchmarks cluster into distinct sub-problems.

The frontier

Recent methods not yet superseded in the knowledge base.