MoonshotAI: Kimi K3 vs Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-12.
| MoonshotAI: Kimi K3 | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | moonshotai | anthropic |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Input Price | $0.19/M | $2.00/M |
| Output Price | $16.00/M | $10.00/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,000,000 |
| Max Output | 943,718 | 128,000 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, Kimi K3 costs $4.19 and Claude Sonnet 5 costs $4.50, so Kimi K3 is slightly cheaper for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,048,576 and 1,000,000 tokens, about 1,573 and 1,500 pages.
Only Kimi K3 offers video input.
Across the 10 tasks where they differ, Kimi K3 scores higher on 4 (Code Completion, JSON Extraction, Bulk Data Labeling and others), Claude Sonnet 5 on 6 (SQL Generation, Code Documentation, Regex Writing and others).
Kimi K3 was released in July 2026 and Claude Sonnet 5 in June 2026.
Pick Kimi K3 if you need lower cost or video input.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | MoonshotAI: Kimi K3 | Anthropic: Claude Sonnet 5 |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 132 | 132 |
| Code Completion | 128 | 117 |
| Code Documentation | 128 | 129 |
| Regex Writing | 116 | 117 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 132 | 132 |
| JSON Extraction | 128 | 121 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 125 | 118 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 136 | 136 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 120 | 113 |
| Blog Post Writing | 120 | 120 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →