Kimi Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

Kimi is a hosted AI assistant from Moonshot AI, the Beijing company founded in March 2023 by Yang Zhilin, Zhou Xinyu, and Wu Yuxin. The chatbot launched in October 2023 and initially stood out for processing very long Chinese documents. Moonshot later expanded Kimi toward coding, research, documents, website deployment, and agent work. The service now includes consumer chat, Kimi Code, Kimi Claw, Agent Swarm, and an API. Hosted membership, API access, and downloadable Kimi model weights are separate offerings. The US-dollar membership page lists a free tier plus Plus, Pro, Max, and Ultra plans. The company also publishes a China membership page with different prices and plan structures, so the displayed currency and regional terms matter when comparing plans.

A typical Kimi session begins with a conversation, uploaded office files, or a research request. Users can ask it to process documents, spreadsheets, and slides, search the web, run Deep Research, deploy a website, schedule tasks, or coordinate agent subtasks. Projects provide persistent work areas, with project counts and storage varying by plan. Kimi Code targets coding work, while Agent Swarm coordinates multiple agents for larger jobs. Kimi Claw can deploy a website with database support through eligible memberships. Scheduled tasks and dashboard widgets can run automatically and push results. Agent actions consume membership credits based on token use. A deployed Kimi Claw website can continue consuming credits while active, which makes ongoing deployments different from one-off document questions.

Moonshot’s model line has changed quickly. Kimi K2 arrived in July 2025, followed by K2 Thinking in November 2025. K2.5 launched on January 27, 2026, with native multimodality and agent swarm support for up to 100 subagents and 1,500 tool calls, according to the company. K2.6 followed on April 20 with company claims of up to 300 subagents and 4,000 collaborative steps. K3 launched on July 16 with native vision, 2.8 trillion total parameters, and a one-million-token context. K3.1 Pro and K3.1 Pro Highspeed arrived on October 23, 2026. The API lists 1,048,576-token context for K3 and K3.1 models, while K2 models have 262,144 tokens. K2.5 was discontinued on August 31, 2026.

The free membership provides two concurrent agent tasks, two scheduled tasks, two widget tasks, two projects, and 500MB of project storage. Plus costs $19/month, or $180 annually paid upfront, and adds Kimi Code, Agent Swarm, 20 projects, and 20GB storage. Pro costs $39/month, or $372 annually, and adds two-times agent credits, Goal Mode, and K3.1 Pro Highspeed. Max costs $99/month, or $948 annually, with four concurrent tasks, 100 projects, 50GB storage, and five-times agent credits. Ultra costs $199/month, or $1,908 annually, with four concurrent tasks, 100 projects, and ten-times agent credits. Credits refresh monthly and do not roll over. API pricing is separate, with K3.1 Pro listed at $2.00 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens.

Kimi’s constraints include changing model access, credit-based usage, regional terms, and consumer data practices. Kimi Help says de-identified and encrypted user inputs, instructions, and responses may be used to train or improve models. Users can request an account-level opt-out through support, with identity verification and a stated five-to-seven-working-day process. The consumer service says data is stored on secure servers in mainland China. ChatGPT offers a broader general-purpose product, Claude is a close alternative for writing and coding, and Gemini connects more directly with Google services. Downloadable Kimi models have model-specific licenses separate from hosted membership. Kimi is the better pick for long documents, agent workflows, and users who want Kimi Code or Kimi Claw in one workspace.