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AI Choice Engine

Model comparison

Kimi K3 vs Mistral Large 3

Moonshot AI against Mistral, compared on context, price, and attributed benchmark results.

Recorded profile verification October 2, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Medium — see receipts below

Moonshot AI

Kimi K3

Frontier · Open weights

vs

Mistral

Mistral Large 3

Frontier · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationKimi K3Mistral Large 3
ProviderMoonshot AIMistral
TierFrontierFrontier
Context windowWinner: 1.05M262K
Max output1.05MNot verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens$3Winner: $0.50
Output / 1M tokens$15Winner: $1.50
WeightsOpenOpen
Parameters2.8T total / 104B active (MoE)675B total / 41B active (sparse MoE)
Reasoning levelslow, high, maxNot verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestext, image, videotext, image
LicenseKimi K3 License (custom)Apache 2.0
API model idkimi-k3mistral-large-2512
ReleasedJuly 16, 2026December 2, 2025
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index [max] · source date Kimi K3: 2026-10-0144Not verifiedUnverified
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index · source date Mistral Large 3: 2026-10-01Not verifiedUnverified9
Terminal-Bench 2.1 [max] · source date Kimi K3: 2026-10-0188.3Not verifiedUnverified
GPQA Diamond [max] · source date Kimi K3: 2026-10-0193.5Not verifiedUnverified
GPQA Diamond · source date Mistral Large 3: 2026-09-26Not verifiedUnverified68
Humanity's Last Exam [max] · source date Kimi K3: 2026-10-0156Not verifiedUnverified
SWE-bench Verified · source date Kimi K3: 2026-10-0193.4Not verifiedUnverified

Dates beside benchmark scores refer to the linked source’s publication or capture date unless that source explicitly states when it measured the result. A shared URL alone does not establish comparable runs; unverified setups are marked. Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

Pricing tiers

Kimi K3: $3/$15 per million input/output tokens; cached input $0.30. Cache writes add $3/MTok for 5-minute TTL or $6/MTok for 1-hour TTL; hits refresh TTL without another write charge. API access requires a successful top-up of at least $1. max_completion_tokens defaults to 131,072 and can be set up to 1,048,576. Kimi K3 uses a custom license; self-hosting has compute costs.

Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05. The 675B-total / 41B-active multimodal checkpoint declares Apache 2.0. Regional hosting is endpoint-specific.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked October 1, 2026

Kimi K3

Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's open-weight multimodal 2.8T/104B MoE model with a 1,048,576-token context.

Best for

  • Open-weight frontier work
  • Long-context
  • Multimodal

Watch out

Thinking is always on; preserve complete assistant reasoning/tool history. Vision input requires base64 or ms:// rather than public image URLs, and temperature/top_p/n/penalties are fixed. Current docs discourage production web-search use. The custom licence requires an agreement for Model-as-a-Service businesses above $20M aggregate licensee/affiliate revenue over consecutive 12 months; commercial products above 100M monthly active users or $20M monthly revenue require Kimi K3 UI attribution. Internal use and official/certified serving routes have separate exemptions. July 16 is Kimi Code's release date, distinct from weights publication.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked October 2, 2026

Mistral Large 3

Mistral's December 2025 multimodal 675B/41B sparse MoE with a 256K context; Medium 3.5 is a separate dense model with configurable reasoning.

Best for

  • Open-weight deployments
  • Multimodal EU-hosted inference
  • Balanced frontier work

Watch out

The publisher describes Large 3 as not a dedicated reasoning model and documents vision limitations. It advertises FP8 deployment on a B200/H200 node or a separate NVFP4 checkpoint on H100/A100 nodes; this is not a guarantee for every serving setup. A separate hard output cap is not verified. Confirm regional residency on the actual endpoint.

When the cheaper one wins

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper on output at $1.50 per million tokens against $15 for Kimi K3 — about 10×. 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. This compares standard short-context token rates, not total cost per accepted task. Include input, cache, context tiers, schedules, retries and review in your pilot.

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Evidence confidence: Medium

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.
  • 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, reasoning levels.
  • No directly aligned benchmark setup — No benchmark has matching cited sources, source dates, units, effort and recorded run details on both models.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Older of the two catalog checks was 25 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.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Kimi K3 · Mistral Large 3

Common questions

Kimi K3 vs Mistral Large 3

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Kimi K3 or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for input?
Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $3 for Kimi K3 — roughly 6.0× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; Kimi K3: $3/$15 per million input/output tokens; cached input $0.30. Cache writes add $3/MTok for 5-minute TTL or $6/MTok for 1-hour TTL; hits refresh TTL without another write charge. API access requires a successful top-up of at least $1. max_completion_tokens defaults to 131,072 and can be set up to 1,048,576. Kimi K3 uses a custom license; self-hosting has compute costs. Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05. The 675B-total / 41B-active multimodal checkpoint declares Apache 2.0. Regional hosting is endpoint-specific.
Is Kimi K3 or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for output?
Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $1.50 per million output tokens, against $15 for Kimi K3 — roughly 10× the price. Estimate both input and output token volume for your workload. These are base rates; Kimi K3: $3/$15 per million input/output tokens; cached input $0.30. Cache writes add $3/MTok for 5-minute TTL or $6/MTok for 1-hour TTL; hits refresh TTL without another write charge. API access requires a successful top-up of at least $1. max_completion_tokens defaults to 131,072 and can be set up to 1,048,576. Kimi K3 uses a custom license; self-hosting has compute costs. Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05. The 675B-total / 41B-active multimodal checkpoint declares Apache 2.0. Regional hosting is endpoint-specific.
Which has the larger context window, Kimi K3 or Mistral Large 3?
Kimi K3 accepts 1.05M tokens against 262K for Mistral Large 3. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.
Should I use Kimi K3 or Mistral Large 3?
Both are classified in our frontier tier; this editorial grouping does not imply equal capability. Kimi K3 is a candidate for open-weight frontier work; Mistral Large 3 is a candidate for open-weight deployments. Compare accuracy, tool reliability, latency and cost on representative tasks.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Mistral Large 3 costs $0.50 per 1M tokens versus $3 for Kimi K3 — a 6x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: Kimi K3 takes 1.05M against 262K for Mistral Large 3 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
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