Price: Free chat at kimi.com. Paid plans from $19/month. Pay-as-you-go API, one of the cheapest on the market.
Platforms: Web · iOS · Android
Free plan: yes
API available: yes
Open source: yes
Available in Spanish: no
What is Kimi?
Kimi is the assistant from China's Moonshot AI, known for its trillion-parameter K2 models released with open weights under a modified MIT licence. Its most recent versions go toe to toe with the flagship models from OpenAI and Anthropic on coding and agentic tasks, at a fraction of the cost per token. The web chat is free.
Pros
- Open-weight models that perform like the paid flagships
- Genuinely usable free web chat
- API far cheaper than OpenAI's or Anthropic's
- Especially good at coding and agent tasks
Cons
- Interface and documentation are geared to Chinese and English
- Chinese company: same privacy questions as DeepSeek in corporate settings
- Lacks the app and integration ecosystem of the big players
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi free?
The chat at kimi.com is free and usable without paying. Paid plans start at $19/month and the API is billed by usage.
Are its models open?
Yes, the K2 family is published with open weights under a modified MIT licence, allowing commercial and research use.
What is it best at?
Mainly coding and agent tasks, where its latest versions match the flagship models at a far lower cost per token.