Model · Moonshot AI · Text
Kimi K3
The largest open-weights model published to date — 2.8T total parameters with 104B active — and natively multimodal across text, images and video. Frontier-adjacent performance with downloadable weights.
- Modality
- Text
- License
- Kimi K3 License (Open weights)
- Parameter size
- 2.8T total, 104B active (896 experts, 16 selected per token)
- Context window
- 1,048,576 tokens 1M tokens. No max-output ceiling is published. 93 layers, with a 401M-parameter MoonViT-V2 vision encoder for native image and video input. API launched 2026-07-17, ten days before the weights.
- Released
- July 27, 2026
- Last verified
- September 8, 2026
- Runs locally
- Yes
- Also handles
- vision, reasoning, code
Strengths
- Frontier-level performance across long-horizon coding, knowledge work and reasoning — GPQA Diamond 93.5, Terminal-Bench 2.1 88.3, BrowseComp 91.2
- Native multimodal across text, images and video, with a 2.5x scaling-efficiency improvement over K2
- Named domain strengths in GPU kernel optimisation, compiler development, game development, chip design and scientific research code
- Weights are downloadable — an option no proprietary model at this level offers
Weaknesses
- Moonshot says plainly that overall performance still trails Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, with a noticeable gap in user experience
- Sensitive to thinking history and requires a compatible harness
- May make unexpected decisions on the user's behalf during ambiguous tasks
- 2.8T parameters means self-hosting is theoretical for almost everyone — the licence is open, the hardware bill is not
- Commercial licence gate: a Model-as-a-Service business earning over $20M in any rolling 12 months must negotiate a separate agreement with Moonshot before commercial use
Try it
| Where | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hugging Face | weights | Kimi K3 License |
| Moonshot AI platform | hosted-api | API key required |
Used in solutions
Official sources
- Model card model
- Announcement announcement
- Technical report paper
Change log
- — Initial entry — first Moonshot AI model in the catalog. Weights released 2026-07-27; the API launched 2026-07-17. The licence was read in full: contrary to widely repeated secondary reports, it contains NO revenue-sharing clause and no percentage. What it has is a negotiation gate — MaaS operators above $20M revenue over any rolling 12 months must agree separate terms first — plus an attribution requirement above 100M MAU or $20M monthly revenue. Internal use and access through Moonshot's own products are exempt.
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