All comparisons · Prices checked 2026-10-01

Kimi K3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5: API cost comparison

For a typical chatbot reply, Kimi K3 costs $0.011 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $0.0091 per request: Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 13% cheaper. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper in every workload below.

API prices

Kimi K3Claude Sonnet 5.5
MakerMoonshot AIAnthropic
Input / 1M tokens$3$2
Output / 1M tokens$15$10
Output vs input price5.0×5.0×
Context window1.05M tokens1M tokens
Tokens for the same English textbaseline (GPT o200k count)~130% of GPT's count (estimate)

Cost by workload

Workload (per 1,000 requests)Kimi K3Claude Sonnet 5.5Cheaper
Chatbot reply
short question plus some chat history · 1,500 in / 400 out
$10.50$9.10Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper
Document Q&A (RAG)
retrieved passages plus a question · 8,000 in / 500 out
$31.50$27.30Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper
Coding agent step
large working context, short edit · 25,000 in / 800 out
$87.00$75.40Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper
Summarize a long report
long input, short summary · 20,000 in / 300 out
$64.50$55.90Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper
Write an article
short brief, long draft · 800 in / 2,000 out
$32.40$28.08Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper
Bar chart: Kimi K3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 API cost per 1,000 requests for chatbot, RAG, coding agent, summary and article workloads
Kimi K3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5: cost per 1,000 requests by workload (USD).

Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper on both input and output, so it costs less for every kind of request. The gap is 1.2× on input and 1.2× on output once the tokenizer difference is included.

Same text, different token counts. Each company uses its own tokenizer. By our estimate Claude Sonnet 5.5 counts about 30% more tokens than Kimi K3 for the same English text, and the costs above already include that. Paste your own prompt into the token counter to see both counts.

Monthly cost

Monthly volumeKimi K3Claude Sonnet 5.5
10,000 chatbot replies / month$105$91.00
100,000 chatbot replies / month$1,050$910
1,000,000 chatbot replies / month$10,500$9,100

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Token counts are for English text measured with GPT's tokenizer; each model's own tokenizer difference is applied automatically.

Questions

Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Claude Sonnet 5.5?

For a typical chatbot reply (1,500 input and 400 output tokens), Kimi K3 costs $0.011 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $0.0091 per request, so Claude Sonnet 5.5 is 13% cheaper. Claude Sonnet 5.5 is cheaper in every workload below.

How much do Kimi K3 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 cost per million tokens?

Kimi K3 costs $3 per 1M input tokens and $15 per 1M output tokens. Claude Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 input and $10 output. Prices checked 2026-10-01.

Do both models count the same text as the same number of tokens?

No. Each model family has its own tokenizer, so the same text can be a different number of tokens. The costs on this page already include that difference (estimated from GPT's tokenizer).

Related comparisons

Paste a real prompt to see its exact tokens and cost on Kimi K3, Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 30+ other models.

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Standard API list prices, short-context tier, no caching or batch discounts. Prices change; check each provider's pricing page before large jobs.