Kimi K3 Pricing
Moonshot AI · Moonshot's 2026 flagship, released July 16. A 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight
Save up to 70% on Kimi K3 API cost
Same model, same quality — pay less per token than the official API. Pay-as-you-go, no credit card required.
Other Moonshot AI Models
Kimi K2.7 CodeKimi K2.6Kimi K2.5Kimi K3 Pricing Context
Pricing position within Moonshot AI
Kimi K3 is the most expensive active model from Moonshot AI at $2.80/1M input — the premium tier. The cheapest sibling costs $0.56/1M (80% less). Reserve Kimi K3 for tasks where its capabilities justify the premium; route bulk traffic to cheaper siblings.
When Kimi K3 is worth the cost
Kimi K3 is deployed for problems that need structured thinking — math derivations, logic puzzles, scientific analysis, and multi-step research synthesis. The reasoning chain adds latency, so reserve it for tasks where a standard chat model produces shallow or incorrect answers. For routine Q&A and summarization, a cheaper sibling model is more cost-effective.
Cost vs sibling models
What makes Kimi K3 different from sibling models: compared to Kimi K2.7 Code ($1.90/1M cheaper, 256K vs 1M context (smaller)); Kimi K2.6 ($1.90/1M cheaper, 128K vs 1M context (smaller)); Kimi K2.5 ($2.24/1M cheaper, 128K vs 1M context (smaller)). Choose Kimi K3 when step-by-step reasoning matters more than speed.
Real-world cost scenarios
Real-world deployments: math problem solving, scientific research synthesis, multi-step logical analysis, and structured decision support systems. Kimi K3 excels where standard chat models produce shallow answers — the reasoning chain catches edge cases that faster models miss.