Moonshot AI Kimi K3

Kimi K3 by Moonshot AI excels in the Coding category, where it ranks #61 with a composite score of 79/100. Kimi K3 is a 2.8T parameter open-weight multimodal reasoning model from Moonshot AI. It is suited for complex coding, knowledge work, and long-horizon agentic workflows, and is particularly strong at... It is particularly strong in areas highlighted by its top benchmark performance and adoption metrics, making it suitable for both individual developers and enterprise teams looking for a reliable coding solution.

Kimi K3 is priced at $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens (USD). Contact the provider for volume discounts and enterprise pricing. Pricing is competitive within the coding category and reflects the model's quality-to-cost ratio.

In the Coding category, Kimi K3 holds rank #61 out of 319 models tracked. Its quality rank is #61 and adoption rank is #61. You can use our comparison tool at /compare to see detailed side-by-side metrics with specific alternatives. Key differentiators include its composite scoring across benchmarks, community sentiment, and real-world adoption rates.

Kimi K3 has been evaluated across 6 different signals. Its strongest areas include Capabilities (83/100), Benchmarks (78/100), Pricing (85/100). These scores are derived from industry-standard benchmarks, community ratings, and real-world performance metrics. The composite score of 79/100 reflects a weighted combination of all tracked signals.

Kimi K3 is a paid model, though some providers may offer trial credits or limited free tiers for evaluation. Check Moonshot AI's website for current free tier availability and promotional offers.

Kimi K3 supports a 1,049K token context window (1,048,576 tokens total). That translates to roughly 786,432 words in a single prompt. This is large enough to process entire codebases, research papers, or long conversation histories in one shot.

Kimi K3 supports image understanding (vision), function/tool calling, structured JSON output, extended reasoning/chain-of-thought, streaming responses. Function calling lets you integrate it with external APIs and tools programmatically. Vision support means it can analyze images, screenshots, and diagrams alongside text. These capabilities determine which workflows and integrations the model can handle natively.

Kimi K3 was developed by Moonshot AI. It was released on July 16, 2026. You can access it through Moonshot AI's API. Check our provider page for all models from Moonshot AI and how they compare against each other.

Pick Kimi K3 when you need a solid balance of cost and capability for everyday development tasks, content generation, and standard API integrations. If your task is straightforward text completion or classification, a cheaper model might give you 90% of the quality at a fraction of the price. Run a quick benchmark on your actual use case before committing.

You can access Kimi K3 through Moonshot AI's API using standard HTTP requests or their official SDK. Most providers support OpenAI-compatible endpoints, so switching between models often requires changing just the model name in your API call. Streaming is supported for real-time token-by-token output. For production use, implement proper error handling, rate limiting, and cost monitoring.