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Kimi K3 API Pricing & Cost Calculator

Kimi K3 is the value-frontier pick: cheaper than Claude Opus 5 or GPT-5.6 Sol, smarter than the workhorse tier. Pair its 90% cache discount with long-context agentic workflows for the best economics.

Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's frontier reasoning model, sitting just behind Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on the smartness tier but significantly cheaper per token.

By TechCompare · Updated

Input tokens
100,000
per request
Output tokens
5,000
per request
Volume
100 / monthly
Standard API

Calculator

Cost Comparison

Based on 100,000 input tokens (50% cached), 5,000 output tokens, and 100 requests.Prices are fetched live from OpenRouter and may include temporary promotional discounts not accounted for in our article and comparison figures.

Same 100,000 in / 5,000 out (50% cached) scenario, pre-loaded. Adjust tokens, caching, or swap models.
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How this is calculated

Kimi K3 is priced at $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens, with a 90% prompt caching discount ($0.30 per million). That puts it between Claude Sonnet 5 ($2/$10) and Claude Opus 5 ($5/$25), positioning it as the value-frontier pick.

Verdict

Kimi K3 lands at $3/M input and $15/M output, putting it between Sonnet 5 ($2/$10) and Opus 5 ($5/$25) on both rows. The 90% cache discount drops input to $0.30/M, which is where the long-context agentic case lives: stable system prompts and tool definitions reused across thousands of calls collapse to roughly a tenth of the headline input rate. At a representative 100K input + 5K output call the standard cost is about $0.375, and with a 90% cache hit the input side falls to $0.03 while output stays the same, so the per-call math scales cleanly into the volume tier.

More API Standalones scenarios

GPT-5.5 Pricing
Single-model gpt-5.5 cost estimate
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GPT-5.4 Pricing
Single-model gpt-5.4 cost estimate
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Claude Opus 4.8 Pricing
Single-model claude-opus-4.8 cost estimate
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Frequently asked questions

Is Kimi K3 cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5?
No - Kimi K3 costs $3.00 per million input and $15.00 per million output vs Sonnet 5's $2.00/$10.00. Kimi sits between Sonnet 5 and Opus 5, priced for buyers who need more intelligence than Sonnet without paying Opus rates.
How much does Kimi K3 cost per million output tokens?
Kimi K3 charges $15.00 per million output tokens, 40% cheaper than Claude Opus 5's $25/M. With its 90% prompt caching discount, cached input drops to $0.30 per million. There is no batch discount on Kimi K3, so asynchronous bulk work doesn't get the 50% off that Anthropic does.
Is Kimi K3 actually cheaper than Claude Sonnet 5?
Yes for high-volume live workloads. Kimi K3 charges $3/M input and $15/M output, identical to Sonnet 4.6. Compared to Sonnet 5's $5/$25, Kimi K3 is meaningfully cheaper per call. Both share a 90% cache discount and a 1M context window. The trade-off is Kimi's smaller ecosystem and less mature tool-calling.

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