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 K3 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Moonshot AI | Anthropic |
| Input / 1M tokens | $3 | $2 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $15 | $10 |
| Output vs input price | 5.0× | 5.0× |
| Context window | 1.05M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Tokens for the same English text | baseline (GPT o200k count) | ~130% of GPT's count (estimate) |
Cost by workload
| Workload (per 1,000 requests) | Kimi K3 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chatbot reply short question plus some chat history · 1,500 in / 400 out | $10.50 | $9.10 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper |
| Document Q&A (RAG) retrieved passages plus a question · 8,000 in / 500 out | $31.50 | $27.30 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper |
| Coding agent step large working context, short edit · 25,000 in / 800 out | $87.00 | $75.40 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper |
| Summarize a long report long input, short summary · 20,000 in / 300 out | $64.50 | $55.90 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper |
| Write an article short brief, long draft · 800 in / 2,000 out | $32.40 | $28.08 | Claude Sonnet 5.5 13% cheaper |
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 volume | Kimi K3 | Claude 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 |
Calculate your own
Enter your typical request size and volume.
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).
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Paste a real prompt to see its exact tokens and cost on Kimi K3, Claude Sonnet 5.5 and 30+ other models.
Open the token counter →Standard API list prices, short-context tier, no caching or batch discounts. Prices change; check each provider's pricing page before large jobs.