Kimi K3: frequently asked questions
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Short, sourced answers to the questions people actually search. Deeper material: model overview, pricing, API guide, local deployment.
What is Kimi K3?
Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's flagship model announced July 16, 2026: about 2.8 trillion parameters (MoE), text plus image input, a 1M-token context window, and a promised open-weight release by July 27, 2026.
How much does Kimi K3 cost per million tokens?
$3 for input and $15 for output on the official API, verified July 21, 2026. Cached input is discounted; the exact cached rate hasn't been published yet.
Is Kimi K3 free to use?
The kimi.com chat interface has a free tier with usage limits. The API is paid from the first token — there is no meaningful free API allowance at launch.
How large is the context window?
1,048,576 tokens (1M), covering input and output combined. That's roughly 1,500–2,000 pages of text in one request.
When do the open weights come out?
Moonshot promised the weights by July 27, 2026. Our local-deployment page tracks the release and the practical hardware math.
Can Kimi K3 process images?
Yes — K3 accepts image input alongside text, a first for the K-series flagships, and is reported to be strong at screenshots, logs and UI mockups.
Is the API OpenAI-compatible?
Yes. Standard OpenAI SDKs work by swapping the base URL and key. See our API guide for working Python and Node examples.
How does K3 compare to Kimi K2.6?
K3 is roughly 3× the price ($3/$15 vs $0.95/$4) but scored +732 Elo over K2.6 on Artificial Analysis private evals and uses about 21% fewer output tokens on matched tasks.
Is Kimi K3 better than DeepSeek?
K3 is positioned above DeepSeek's 1.6T V4 Pro on launch benchmarks, at a higher price. Our comparison article breaks down when each wins.
How accurate is this site's data?
Every price and spec lives in one registry with a source URL and verification date, shown as 'Last verified' stamps. When a number changes upstream, the whole site updates together.