# Kimi K3: pricing, crowd verdict, pros and cons (2026)

> Moonshot's 2.8T-parameter MoE that sparked the 'new DeepSeek moment': frontier-adjacent scores at $3/$15

Source: [GLAD-AI-TOR](https://glad-ia-tor.com) · Full page: https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/kimi-k3
Arena: llm-models · Crowd score: 57% recommend (3 votes, Bayesian-smoothed) · Price: $15/1M out

Released 2026-07-16 by Beijing-based Moonshot AI and unveiled at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. Kimi K3 is a 2.8-trillion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model (896 experts, 16 active per token) with a 1M-token context window and native text, image and video input. API ID kimi-k3 at $3/1M input ($0.30 on cache hit) and $15/1M output, flat across the whole context window, also on OpenRouter. It reached #3 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at launch, comparable to Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5, triggering 'new DeepSeek moment' headlines and a semiconductor sell-off. Open weights (~594 GB, MXFP4) were announced for 2026-07-27; not yet published at the time of this fiche, with a Modified-MIT-style license expected but unconfirmed.

## Key facts

- provider: Moonshot AI
- contextWindow: 1M tokens
- priceIn: $3/1M in
- priceOut: $15/1M out
- modalities: text, vision, video input
- openWeights: no

## Ratings (editorial, 1-5)

- reasoning: 4.5/5
- coding: 4.5/5
- writing: 4/5
- speed: 2/5
- valueForMoney: 3.5/5

## Pros

- #3 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (57) at launch, comparable to Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5: the closest a Chinese lab has come to the closed US frontier
- 93.4% on SWE-bench Verified in Vals AI's independent harness (GPT-5.6 Sol: 96.2%, Claude Fable 5: 95.0%) and #1 on Arena.ai's Frontend Code Arena at 1679 points, ahead of Fable 5
- 93.5% on GPQA Diamond (between Fable 5's 92.6% and GPT-5.6's 94.1%), 96.1% on AIME 2025, and Elo 1668 on GDPval-AA v2 agentic work, second only to Fable 5
- Strong agentic profile: #1 on AutomationBench-AA SaaS workflows (53%), long-horizon terminal and repo navigation via Kimi Code, and ~21% fewer output tokens than K2 for more intelligence
- $3/$15 per 1M tokens (input drops to $0.30 on cache hit), flat across the full 1M context: still well under US closed-frontier pricing, with an OpenAI-compatible API and OpenRouter availability
- Native multimodal input (text, image, video) and open weights announced for 2026-07-27 under an expected Modified-MIT-style license, positioning it as the first 3T-class open-weights frontier model

## Cons

- 3x price jump over Kimi K2.6 ($0.95/$4 to $3/$15) makes it the most expensive Chinese model ever shipped, at Claude Sonnet 5 list price: the '10x cheaper than US models' era is over (Simon Willison documented the hike)
- Slow: 33 output tokens/s, ranked #145 of 190 models on Artificial Analysis, a poor fit for interactive use
- Hallucination rate climbed from 39% (K2.6) to 51% on AA-Omniscience as the model now attempts answers it would previously refuse (Fable 5 sits at a comparable 54.9%)
- Political censorship on sensitive topics in Mandarin (deflects on Xi, CCP, Tiananmen) and Beijing jurisdiction for API data, a compliance blocker for many EU and enterprise deployments; UK AISI/CAISI also found its cyber guardrails failed to block exploit-development attempts during testing
- 'Open weights' is theoretical for most: ~594 GB in native MXFP4 requiring a multi-GPU datacenter to self-host, and the weights (plus final license) were still unpublished at review time

## Best for

- frontier-level coding and agents outside US clouds
- frontend generation (top of Arena.ai's leaderboard)
- SaaS workflow automation and tool orchestration
- teams planning to self-host 3T-class open weights

## Verdict

Kimi K3 is the strongest argument yet that the frontier is no longer exclusively American: #3 on Artificial Analysis, top-tier GPQA and SWE-bench Verified scores, and the best frontend-code arena ranking in the business, at roughly half to a third of US closed-frontier prices. Take it for agentic coding, frontend work and SaaS automation where its benchmarks are strongest, or if your roadmap depends on self-hosting a frontier-class model once the weights land. Skip it for interactive products (33 tokens/s is slow), for anything touching politically sensitive content or strict EU data-residency requirements (Mandarin-language censorship, Beijing jurisdiction), and for high-accuracy retrieval where its 51% hallucination rate on AA-Omniscience demands a verification layer. Cost-obsessed teams should note DeepSeek V4 still delivers vastly more tokens per dollar; K3's pitch is peak capability per dollar, not cheapest tokens.

## Pricing note

Official Moonshot API list price for kimi-k3: $3/1M input (cache miss), $0.30/1M on cache hit, $15/1M output including reasoning trace, flat across the 1M context (no length tiers). Same $3/$15 on OpenRouter (no cache pricing exposed there). A 3x increase over Kimi K2.6's $0.95/$4. Verified against platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat-k3, 2026-07.

## Alternatives and head-to-heads

- [Claude Haiku 4.5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-haiku-4-5) (crowd score 67%) · [Kimi K3 vs Claude Haiku 4.5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/kimi-k3-vs-claude-haiku-4-5)
- [Claude Opus 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-opus-5) (crowd score 63%) · [Kimi K3 vs Claude Opus 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/kimi-k3-vs-claude-opus-5)
- [Claude Fable 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-fable-5) (crowd score 63%) · [Kimi K3 vs Claude Fable 5](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/kimi-k3-vs-claude-fable-5)
- [Claude Opus 4.7](https://glad-ia-tor.com/tool/claude-opus-4-7) (crowd score 57%) · [Kimi K3 vs Claude Opus 4.7](https://glad-ia-tor.com/vs/kimi-k3-vs-claude-opus-4-7)

Full ranking: https://glad-ia-tor.com/hall-of-fame/llm-models

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