Kimi K3
Kimi K3
One of the strongest open-weights models, and it reads a million tokens without blinking.
Updated
The read
Moonshot published K3 at a very large scale, with native vision, an explicit thinking mode and a million-token window, and in October it still ranks among the top open models on both independent leaderboards. Two caveats matter: the licence restricts commercial use above a revenue threshold, so it is open weights rather than open source, and the hosted API costs three dollars in and fifteen out, priced like a Western frontier model rather than a Chinese one.
Where it shines
- Million-token context handled properly rather than nominally
- Native vision and an explicit thinking mode
- Among the highest human-preference ratings of any open model
Worth knowing first
- The licence caps commercial use above a revenue threshold
- Hosted API costs several times more than other Chinese frontier models
Index score
85.1
Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.
- Rank
- 20 of 73
- Builds
- LLMs
- Category
- Open weights
- Output
- Published weights with licence conditions, plus an API
- Pricing
- Free tier
- Best for
- Long-document and agent work at the top of the open field
Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.
Also worth a look
Full index- 05GLM-5.3 FlashGLM-5.3 FlashProvisionalA fast, MIT-licensed open model that human voters rank beside the big flagships.Open weightsFree tier89.6
- 06Xiaomi MiMo V2.6 ProMiMo V2.6 ProProvisionalThe strongest large open-weights model on the independent index, under MIT, for under a dollar out.Open weightsFree tier89.4
- 07DeepSeek V4.1 FlashDeepSeek V4.1 FlashProvisionalFrontier-adjacent answers for thirty cents per million input tokens, with the weights under MIT.Open weightsFree tier88.3
