Kimi
Verdict
Evidence: Editorial assessmentKimi K3 from Moonshot AI is a 2.8T-parameter open-weight model with native vision and a 1M-token context window. It suits teams that need long context and multimodal input from open weights, or an API compatible with OpenAI and Anthropic clients. Its own Kimi K3 License applies, so read it before shipping.
Quick facts
| Kimi | |
|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI |
| Category | AI Models & Open-Weight LLMs |
| Pricing model | Open weights |
| Status | Active |
| Official site | github.com |
| Data last checked | 5 October 2026 |
Key facts and sources
| Claim | Detail | Evidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model details | Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 is a 2.8T-parameter model with 104B activated parameters, native vision and a 1,048,576-token context window. Weights are on Hugging Face and ModelScope under the Kimi K3 License; an OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API is offered at platform.kimi.ai. | Verified | MoonshotAI/Kimi-K3 on GitHub, 5 October 2026 |
Pricing
No prices are shown because we have not confirmed them on Kimi's own pricing page. Go to Kimi
Who should use it
- Very long documents with open weights
- Swapping an OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible API client to another provider
Who should skip it
- You need a standard permissive licence such as Apache 2.0 (compare gpt-oss)
Limitations and risks
- Custom licence (Kimi K3 License).
- API prices were not listed on the repository.
How it compares: Kimi alternatives
Qwen
Alibaba's Qwen family of language models; Qwen3.8 was released as open weights in August 2026, including a 2.4T-parameter flagship.
DeepSeek
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek's open-weight language models, released under the MIT licence, plus a chat app and API.
gpt-oss
OpenAI's open-weight reasoning models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, released under the Apache 2.0 licence.
Gemma
Google DeepMind's family of open-weight language models; Gemma 3n is the mobile-first member and Gemma 4 is the newest generation.
Llama 2
Meta's 2023 open-weight language model family. It is a legacy release, superseded by newer Llama and other open-weight models.
Rating
Not yet rated. We show a rating only when at least four of six criteria have documented evidence. How we rate AI tools
Common questions
How big is Kimi K3?
2.8 trillion parameters in total with 104 billion activated, and a 1,048,576-token context window, according to Moonshot AI's repository.
Can I use Kimi K3 through an API?
Yes. Moonshot AI offers an OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API at platform.kimi.ai. Prices were not published in the repository; check the platform.
Sources
- MoonshotAI/Kimi-K3 on GitHub · checked 5 October 2026