What Kimi K3 actually costs

In short: Kimi K3 lists at

3 input /

15 output per million tokens. Your bill still depends on which host serves the request, whether cache reads apply, and how large the output window is. Budget the route, not just the sticker.

Moonshot shipped Kimi K3 on July 16 with a 1M-token context window, multimodal input, and toggleable max-effort reasoning. The list price is simple: $3 per million input tokens,$ 15 per million output tokens, $0.30 per million cache reads. That number shows up on Moonshot direct, Novita, and most gateway hosts. Same model, same sticker. The catch: “Kimi K3” isn’t one API call. It’s a model slug that different companies host under different routing rules, output limits, and latency profiles. Budget from the headline rate alone and you miss the bill. This post is a running price check. Direct provider rates come from the Narev Pricing API. Gateway host breakdowns are cross-checked on OpenRouter and Vercel AI Gateway.

Rate card

All prices are dollars per 1M tokens.

Route	Input	Output	Cache read	Notes
Moonshot direct (`kimi-k3`)	$3.00	$15.00	$0.30	1M context, 131K max output
Novita direct (`moonshotai/kimi-k3`)	$3.00	$15.00	$0.30	1M context, 1M max output
OpenRouter → Moonshot	$3.00	$15.00	$0.30	~8.8 s P50
OpenRouter → Nebius	$3.00	$15.00	—	~0.94 s P50; no cache line on OpenRouter
OpenRouter → Fireworks	$3.75	$18.75	$0.375	25% markup over list
Vercel AI Gateway (all hosts)	$3.00	$15.00	$0.30	Flat list rate; hosts differ on speed and caps
Moonshot K2.7 Code (baseline)	$0.95	$4.00	—	Smaller context; ~3× cheaper on input

Cache reads are 10% of input on Moonshot and Novita. For agent loops that reuse a large system prompt or document context, that line item matters. Compared to K2.7 Code on Moonshot, K3 runs about 3.2× on input and 3.75× on output. You are paying for the 1M context window and the newer stack, not a token discount.

A real request, real money

Picture a long agent turn: 100K prompt tokens, 50K cache reads, 10K completion tokens.

Line item	Tokens	Rate	Cost
Prompt	100K	$3.00 / 1M	$0.300
Cache read	50K	$0.30 / 1M	$0.015
Completion	10K	$15.00 / 1M	$0.150
Total (K3)			$0.465
Same turn on K2.7 Code			~$0.15

One-third the cost, one-quarter the context. K3 isn’t a drop-in replacement for K2.7 on price. It’s a different tier.

OpenRouter: one slug, three hosts

OpenRouter exposes a single model ID, moonshotai/kimi-k3. Behind it sit multiple inference providers. OpenRouter picks one based on your routing mode (Balanced, Nitro, Exacto). Your token rate depends on which host wins.

Host	Input / Output	Cache	P50 latency	Notes
Moonshot AI	$3 /$ 15	$0.30	~8.8 s	Highest uptime of the three
Nebius Token Factory	$3 /$ 15	—	~0.94 s	~9× faster than Moonshot’s host; no cache line
Fireworks	$3.75 /$ 18.75	$0.375	—	25% markup; often highest throughput (~46 tps)

On OpenRouter, the slug price isn’t your price. Check which host your routing mode steers toward. If you care about latency at list rates, Nebius is the interesting row. If you don’t control routing, budget for the Fireworks markup as a worst case.

Flat rates on Vercel AI Gateway

Vercel routes moonshotai/kimi-k3 to four backends. All four list the same token rates today:

3 input,

15 output, $0.30 cache read.

Host	P50	Throughput	Context	Max output
Moonshot AI	6.1 s	30 tps	1M	131K
Novita AI	1.4 s	19 tps	1M	1M
Fireworks	2.4 s	69 tps	1M	131K
Baseten	3.1 s	52 tps	1M	131K

Fireworks on Vercel matches list price. On OpenRouter it doesn’t. Same company, different gateway, different markup. Worth knowing if you switch providers and assume pricing carries over. Novita on Vercel is the outlier on output: the only host with a 1M completion ceiling. Every other Vercel route caps at 131K.

Novita direct for 1M output

Novita hosts K3 on its own serverless API at the same

3 /

15 / $0.30 rates. Model ID is moonshotai/kimi-k3 (not the short kimi-k3 slug Moonshot uses). The reason to call Novita directly isn’t price. It’s the output window. Novita lists 1M max output on 1M context. Moonshot direct stops at 131K. If you are on Vercel AI Gateway and routing to Novita anyway, going direct removes a hop and keeps the same token economics. Base URL: https://api.novita.ai/openai.

Resellers and minor markups

A few third-party routes index the short kimi-k3 slug at or near list price:

Reseller	Input / Output	vs list
Poe	$3.03 /$ 15.15	~1% up
Venice	$3.75 /$ 18.75	~25% up
EmpirioLabs, LLM Gateway	$3 /$ 15	Match

None of these change the story. They’re convenience tax, not a different product tier.

When K3 is worth it

Use K3 when your prompts routinely blow past 262K tokens (full repos, long video context, multi-hour chat history), when you need max-effort reasoning on multimodal input, or when you need Novita’s 1M output ceiling.
Stay on K2.7 Code when most requests fit in 32K–128K tokens and you don’t need the extra context. At $0.95 /$ 4 on Moonshot, K2.7 is still the cost-efficient workhorse.
Watch your route when buying through a gateway. OpenRouter’s Fireworks host adds 25%. Vercel’s doesn’t. Nebius on OpenRouter matches list price with much lower latency than Moonshot’s own host on the same gateway.

Keep this current

Rates in this post get refreshed when providers move. For live numbers in your own stack:

# Moonshot and most resellers
curl "https://api.narev.ai/v1/prices?model_id=kimi-k3&provider_id=moonshot"

# Novita (note the full model slug)
curl "https://api.narev.ai/v1/prices?model_id=moonshotai/kimi-k3&provider_id=novita"

# OpenRouter headline rate via Narev MCP
# get_gateway_prices gateway_id=openrouter model_id=moonshotai/kimi-k3

Gateway host breakdowns (Nebius vs Fireworks vs Moonshot on OpenRouter, per-host limits on Vercel) still live on the gateway dashboards. Narev indexes OpenRouter and Kilo as gateways; Vercel AI Gateway host rates are not in that index yet. If you bill customers on Kimi K3 usage, wrap inference with the Narev SDK and attribute cost per tenant. See AI FinOps for the full workflow.

​Rate card

​A real request, real money

​OpenRouter: one slug, three hosts

​Flat rates on Vercel AI Gateway

​Novita direct for 1M output

​Resellers and minor markups

​When K3 is worth it

​Keep this current

Rate card

A real request, real money

OpenRouter: one slug, three hosts

Flat rates on Vercel AI Gateway

Novita direct for 1M output

Resellers and minor markups

When K3 is worth it

Keep this current