Model comparison
Kimi K3 vs MiniMax M3
Moonshot AI against MiniMax, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
Moonshot AI
Kimi K3
Frontier · Open weights
MiniMax
MiniMax M3
Frontier · Open weights
| Specification | Kimi K3 | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | MiniMax |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | Winner: 1.05M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Input / 1M tokens | $3 | Winner: $0.30 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $15 | Winner: $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Parameters | 2.8T (open-weight MoE) | 428B total / 23B active (MoE) |
| Reasoning levels | low, high, max | low, high, max |
| Modalities | text, image, video | text, image, video |
| API model id | kimi-k3 | minimax-m3 |
| Released | July 16, 2026 | June 1, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] (2026-08-14) | 60 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | Not verifiedUnverified | 51 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-07-27) | Winner: 88.3 | 66 |
| GPQA Diamond (2026-07-27) | 93.5 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Humanity's Last Exam (2026-07-27) | 56 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| SWE-bench Verified (2026-09-01) | 93.4 | Not verifiedUnverified |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-09-01: vals.ai SWE-bench Verified leaderboard (independent, mini-swe-agent bash-only); not published by Moonshot; a 76.8 aggregator claim is low-reliability — both notedReal GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
- 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2026-07-27: Kimi K3 HF model card (vendor, with tools; 43.5 no tools)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
- 2026-06-01: MiniMax blog (vendor, Terminus 2 scaffolding, 2h timeout)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Pricing tiers: Kimi K3: $3/$15 per MTok; cached input $0.30/MTok. Open-weight under the custom Kimi K3 License (not a standard open-source licence). 2.8T MoE with native vision. · MiniMax M3: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above.
Kimi K3
Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's open-weight frontier model — 2.8T MoE, 1M context, tied near the top of open-weight leaderboards.
Best for
- Open-weight frontier work
- Long-context
- Multimodal
Watch out
Self-hosting needs large clusters; hosted rates vary.
MiniMax M3
MiniMax M3 is an open-weight (community license) 428B MoE with native multimodal and 1M context.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Multimodal
- Long-context
Watch out
Community license, not fully open; verify terms.
When the cheaper one wins
MiniMax M3 is cheaper on output at $1.20 per million tokens against $15 for Kimi K3 — about 13×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output.
- 2 shared named benchmarks with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Terminal-Bench 2.1.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- Kimi K3: HuggingFace — Kimi K3 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Kimi K3: Moonshot — Kimi K3 guide (accessed 2026-08-29)
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax — M3 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax M3 release (accessed 2026-08-29)
Related comparisons
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- Claude Fable 5 vs MiniMax M3
- Claude Mythos 5.1 vs Kimi K3
- Claude Mythos 5.1 vs MiniMax M3
Diving deeper on one model? Kimi K3 · MiniMax M3
Common questions
Kimi K3 vs MiniMax M3
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3 cheaper for input?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $3 for Kimi K3 — roughly 10× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Kimi K3 has tiered pricing: $3/$15 per MTok; cached input $0.30/MTok. Open-weight under the custom Kimi K3 License (not a standard open-source licence). 2.8T MoE with native vision. MiniMax M3 has tiered pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above.
Is Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3 cheaper for output?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $1.20 per million output tokens, against $15 for Kimi K3 — roughly 13× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Kimi K3 has tiered pricing: $3/$15 per MTok; cached input $0.30/MTok. Open-weight under the custom Kimi K3 License (not a standard open-source licence). 2.8T MoE with native vision. MiniMax M3 has tiered pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above.
Which has the larger context window, Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3?
Kimi K3 accepts 1.05M tokens against 1M for MiniMax M3. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Do Kimi K3 and MiniMax M3 support the same reasoning levels?
Yes — both accept the same effort settings: "low", "high", "max". Higher effort costs more and takes longer, so start low and raise it only where output quality actually improves.
Should I use Kimi K3 or MiniMax M3?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Kimi K3 suits open-weight frontier work; MiniMax M3 suits open-weight deployments.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: MiniMax M3 costs $0.30 per 1M tokens versus $3 for Kimi K3 — a 10x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: Kimi K3 takes 1.05M against 1M for MiniMax M3 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: Kimi K3 leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 60 to 51 (measured 2026-08-14).
Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.