# Kimi K3

Moonshot AI, released 2026-07-16

**Verdict: conditional.** Moonshot AI's open-weight MoE model (Kimi K3 License, weights on Hugging Face) offers a 1M-token context at $3/$15 per 1M tokens and holds #1 on Arena WebDev (preliminary), but still trails Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol on precise execution, and serving the weights needs 64+ accelerators. The rating stays conditional on legal risk: on July 22, 2026 the White House OSTP accused Moonshot of distilling Fable 5 and Treasury threatened sanctions. We have not re-verified that dispute's status this run. Last verified 2026-09-30.

## Pricing

- Input: $3.00 / 1M
- Output: $15.00 / 1M
- Context: 1M ctx, $0.30 cached. Weights live (Jul 27).

## Strengths

- Long-horizon autonomous coding — MiniTriton compiler, 48-hour chip design demonstrations
- Front-end and 3D work with image feedback — Arena WebDev #1 (1679, preliminary)
- Multi-agent orchestration — K3 Swarm Max variant for large-scale parallel processing
- Large-context knowledge work — 1M window for whole-repo and multi-document research
- Precise-execution tasks — still trails Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol
- Self-hosting on modest hardware: the weights are downloadable from Hugging Face under the Kimi K3 License, but serving them needs 64+ accelerators
- Cost-sensitive workloads — AA measured high output verbosity driving up task costs

## Benchmarks

- DeepSWE: 67.5 (https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3)
- Terminal-Bench 2.1: 88.3 (https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3)
- FrontierSWE: 81.2 (https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3)
- Program Bench: 77.8 (https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3)
- SWE Marathon: 42.0 (https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3)
- Arena WebDev: 1679 (#1, preliminary) (https://arena.ai/leaderboard/code)
- AA Intelligence Index: 57 (https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/kimi-k3/)

## Sources

- [Hugging Face: moonshotai/Kimi-K3 (weights, Kimi K3 License)](https://huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-K3)
- [Artificial Analysis: Kimi K3](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/kimi-k3/)
- [MarkTechPost: Moonshot releases K3](https://marktechpost.com/2026/07/16/moonshot-ai-releases-kimi-k3-a-2-8-trillion-parameter-open-moe-model-with-kimi-delta-attention-and-1m-context/)
- [VentureBeat: Largest open-source model ever](https://venturebeat.com/technology/chinas-moonshot-ai-releases-kimi-k3-the-largest-open-source-model-ever-rivaling-top-u-s-systems)
- [Arena WebDev Leaderboard](https://arena.ai/leaderboard/code)
- [Kimi platform chat pricing](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat)
- [Moonshot AI: Kimi K3 — Open Frontier Intelligence](https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3)

Canonical: https://neomanex.com/models/kimi-k3