How much does Kimi cost each month?
Kimi costs $19, $39, $99 or $199 a month for its four memberships, and the app itself is a free download. We read the plans from Kimi's membership pricing page and the US App Store listing on 8 November 2026. US dollars, before tax:
| Kimi plan, read 8 Nov 2026 | Monthly | Billed yearly | Per month on yearly | What Moonshot lists for it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | None | None | Free app download, with in-app purchases |
| Plus | $19 | $180 | $15 | "Coding with Kimi Code, research, office tasks, and Agent Swarm" |
| Pro | $39 | $372 | $31 | "More credits, Goal Mode, and a dedicated Kimi Claw" |
| Max | $99 | $948 | $79 | 5x Agent credits, 4 parallel Agent tasks, 100 projects, 50GB storage, 20 scheduled and 20 widget tasks |
| Ultra | $199 | $1,908 | $159 | 10x Agent credits, 4 parallel Agent tasks, 100 projects, 50GB storage, 25 scheduled and 25 widget tasks |
All of the plans draw on one monthly pool of credits. Moonshot's page says "Both monthly and annual subscriptions refresh credits monthly, with no rollover." Kimi Code on Plus and up has "a rolling 5-hour usage limit and no weekly limit." When the pool runs dry, you can turn on Extra Usage, which lets you "pay as you go" instead of waiting.
Moonshot doesn't say how many tokens or tasks a credit buys. It also gives no multiple for Plus or Pro, only 5x for Max and 10x for Ultra. So there's no way to price a Kimi plan per task in the way that you can price the API. If you're buying for a team, there's a separate plan for that. Kimi's Business help page puts Kimi Business at "$600/seat/year (approx. $50/seat/month)," and you have to buy at least 2 seats and pay for the year up front.
What do the Kimi API models cost?
The Kimi API bills per token, from $0.95 to $4 per million input tokens. It's a separate product from the membership. Moonshot's API price list says inference "is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no subscription plan." We read these rates on 8 November 2026:
| Model, per 1M tokens, read 8 Nov 2026 | Input | Cached input | 5-minute cache write | 1-hour cache write | Output | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kimi-k3.1-pro | $2.00 | $0.20 | $2.00 | $4.00 | $10.00 | 1M |
| kimi-k3.1-pro-highspeed | $4.00 | $0.20 | $4.00 | $8.00 | $20.00 | 1M |
| kimi-k3 | $3.00 | $0.30 | $3.00 | $6.00 | $15.00 | 1M |
| kimi-k2.7-code (closed to new accounts) | $0.95 | $0.19 | No writes | No writes | $4.00 | 262K |
| kimi-k2.7-code-highspeed (closed to new accounts) | $1.90 | $0.38 | No writes | No writes | $8.00 | 262K |
| kimi-k2.6 (closed to new accounts) | $0.95 | $0.16 | No writes | No writes | $4.00 | 262K |
K3.1 Pro is the one that most people should buy. It's a third cheaper than K3 on every rate, cache hits and writes included. The Highspeed version doubles input and output for what Moonshot's K3.1 Pro guide calls "2-3× the speed of K3.1 Pro." Batch jobs on K3.1 Pro and K3 cost 60% of the list price, which puts K3.1 Pro at $1.20 in and $6 out. Prices exclude tax.
Is Kimi K3.1 Pro cheaper than Claude or GPT?
No. Kimi K3.1 Pro costs the same as Claude Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol per fresh token, and more once caching does the work. We read Anthropic's pricing docs and OpenAI's API pricing on 8 November 2026. All three list $2 in and $10 out. Kimi's cache hit is $0.20. Claude's and GPT's are $0.10. Here's one agent session priced on each, with 1 million input tokens across its calls and 50,000 tokens written back:
The K3.1 Pro math with no cache: 1 million input tokens at $2 is $2.00, and 50,000 output tokens at $10 per million is $0.50. That's $2.50, the same as Sonnet 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol. At 90% cache hits, Kimi bills $0.20 for fresh input, $0.18 for cached input and $0.50 for output, so $0.88. Claude and GPT bill $0.79. We left out the one-time cache writes. Kimi charges its plain input rate for a 5-minute write. Anthropic charges 1.25 times, $2.50, so long sessions narrow the gap a little.
Per token, Kimi isn't the bargain that it was. DeepSeek V4 Pro does the same session for $0.37 to $1.52 at peak rates. On Moonshot's own Terminal-Bench 4.0 run, K3.1 Pro scored 65.7%, against 58.2% for GPT-6 Astra and 66.4% for Claude Opus 5.5. Those are Moonshot's figures, and we didn't run the test ourselves.
What does a typical month of Kimi cost?
A chat-only month on the Kimi API costs about $12.60, less than the $19 Plus plan. Take 30 chats a day for 30 days, each sending 3,000 tokens and getting 800 back. That's 2.7 million input tokens at $2, or $5.40, and 720,000 output tokens at $10 per million, or $7.20. Moonshot's guide puts a token at "roughly equivalent to 3-4 characters" of English, so 800 tokens is a long answer of roughly 2,400 to 3,200 characters.
An agent month costs a lot more than that. Ten sessions like the one above each workday, for 22 workdays, is 220 sessions. At 90% cache hits that's 220 × $0.88, or $193.60, close to Ultra's $199. With no cache it's $550. Batch pricing cuts either figure by 40% for work that can wait.
So the API wins if all you do is chat, but you get no Kimi Code, Agent Swarm or Kimi Claw with it. The membership wins when you want those tools. Since Moonshot doesn't publish what a credit buys, the API bill is the only Kimi cost you can predict to the cent.
Is the yearly Kimi plan worth it?
Yes, if you'll keep Kimi for a year: yearly billing saves about 20% on every tier. Moonshot says "Annual billing is charged as one annual total," so you pay it up front. Here's what it saves against twelve monthly payments:
| Plan | 12 months billed monthly | One yearly payment | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plus | $228 | $180 | $48 (21%) |
| Pro | $468 | $372 | $96 (21%) |
| Max | $1,188 | $948 | $240 (20%) |
| Ultra | $2,388 | $1,908 | $480 (20%) |
If you buy it, do it on the web and not in the iPhone app. The App Store sells the Plus Annual Pass for $180.99, 99 cents over the web price. The monthly plans cost the same in both places, $19 to $199.
What happened to Kimi K2 and the old plan names?
Kimi K2 is on its way out. Moonshot's API page says that "starting October 31, 2026, K2 series models will no longer be available to newly registered users." It plans to retire all K2 models by the end of December 2026. Existing users keep them until then. If a pricing page quotes K2.5 or K2.6 as Kimi's cheap option, that option is gone for new accounts.
The plans have changed their names, too. Moderato, Allegretto, Allegro and Vivace are now legacy plans. Subscribers on them keep their "plan names, benefit rules, and auto-renewal arrangements." The App Store still sells both sets at the same prices: Moderato and Plus at $19, Allegretto and Pro at $39. In China, Kimi's Chinese price page adds a Go plan at ¥49 a month, with no Kimi Code.
What does Kimi cost next to the rest of your AI stack?
Here's Kimi inside a common three-plan stack: Kimi Plus at $19, ChatGPT Plus at $20 and Claude Pro at $20, which comes to $59 a month. Swap Plus for Kimi Pro and it's $79.
Whizi, which publishes this page, covers the chat part of that stack. Whizi Pro costs $29.99 a month and puts Kimi K3, Claude, GPT and Gemini in one chat, at 10 credits a Kimi message from 2,500 credits a month. Kimi K3.1 Pro is on Powerhouse at $49.99. Whizi has no Kimi Code, no Agent Swarm, no Kimi Claw and no API. If those are why you pay Moonshot, keep Kimi. One subscription for all AI models shows which mixes a single plan replaces.
Which Kimi plan should you buy?
Buy Plus at $19 if you want Kimi Code or Agent Swarm. Move to Pro at $39 only for Goal Mode, a dedicated Kimi Claw or more credits. Max and Ultra are for people who run agents all day and who hit the limit of the shared pool every month. If you only chat, use the API: our month above came to $12.60 on K3.1 Pro. And if your Kimi use is a few chats next to Claude and ChatGPT, price one shared plan before you add a third bill. The cheapest way to use Claude and GPT works through those mixes.
- Start on Plus at $19, the cheapest plan with Kimi Code and Agent Swarm
- Pay yearly only if you'll keep Kimi 12 months, and buy on the web to skip the App Store's $180.99
- For chat alone, price the K3.1 Pro API at $2 in and $10 out before buying a plan
- Skip Highspeed unless speed is the bottleneck, since it doubles input and output
- Send work that can wait through the Batch API at 60% of list price
- Move any K2 code to K3.1 Pro before Moonshot retires K2 at the end of December 2026
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi free?
Yes, the Kimi app is a free download, listed on the US App Store as "Free" with in-app purchases, as of November 2026. The paid memberships start at $19 a month for Plus, and the API bills per token with no subscription plan. Kimi vs ChatGPT compares what each free app gives you.
Does a Kimi membership include API access?
No, the Kimi API is billed separately. Moonshot says API inference "is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no subscription plan" and "differs from products such as the Kimi membership and Kimi Code." LLM API pricing statistics shows how other labs bill their APIs.
Is the Kimi API cheaper than Claude?
No, Kimi K3.1 Pro costs the same as Claude Sonnet 5.5 per fresh token, $2 in and $10 out, and twice as much per cache hit, $0.20 against $0.10, as of 8 November 2026. It does undercut Claude Opus 5.5, which lists $4 in and $20 out. Claude pricing covers Anthropic's chat plans.
How much does Kimi Code cost?
Kimi Code comes with every membership from Plus at $19 a month. New plans get a rolling 5-hour limit and no weekly limit, as of November 2026. China's cheaper Go plan leaves it out. Best AI for coding compares coding models across labs.
