Kimi Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives

What is Kimi?

Kimi is the AI assistant from Moonshot AI, a Beijing startup founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin and colleagues and backed by investors including Alibaba and Tencent. Kimi first became known for reading very long documents at a time when most chatbots could only handle short inputs. Today it is a full assistant for chat, research, coding and multi-step agent tasks, available on the web and in mobile apps.

Moonshot moves fast. It released the open-weight Kimi K2 model in July 2025, added the OK Computer agent and K2 Thinking later that year, and followed with K2.5 and K2.6 in 2026. In July 2026 it released Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight model. Demand was so high that Moonshot temporarily paused new paid subscriptions days after launch to protect existing members.

What sets Kimi apart is its agent focus. Paid plans are measured in agent credits, and Kimi can split big jobs across an Agent Swarm of sub-agents that work in parallel to build websites, slides, spreadsheets and research reports. Because its models are open weights, developers can also run or fine-tune them outside Moonshot’s own apps.

Key features of Kimi

• Kimi K3 modelsMoonshot’s latest open-weight models power chat and agents, with K3 access reserved for paid plans.
• Long-context chatUpload long PDFs, contracts or codebases and ask detailed questions across the whole document.
• Agent modeGive Kimi a goal and it plans the steps, browses, writes code and produces files such as slides or websites.
• Agent SwarmPaid plans can split a large task across several sub-agents running in parallel for faster, broader results.
• Deep researchKimi searches many sources and writes a structured, cited report.
• Kimi CodeA coding assistant included with higher plans, with its own usage limits.

Who is Kimi best for?

• Researchers and analysts who need to digest long reports and get cited summaries quickly.
• Developers who want strong open models, an API and a coding assistant from the same provider.
• Power users of AI agents who want an assistant to produce finished slides, sites or spreadsheets, not just text.
• Students who want help reading long papers and textbooks for free.

Popular ways to use Kimi

• Long document review: upload a long report and ask for key points, risks and quotes.
• Research reports: run deep research on a market or topic and export the result.
• Slides and websites: ask the agent to turn notes into a presentation or a simple web page.
• Data work: have Kimi clean and analyse a large spreadsheet and chart the results.
• Coding: use Kimi Code or chat to write, refactor and explain code.

Kimi pricing (October 2026)

USD prices are from a 2026 snapshot of kimi.com plans; Moonshot paused new paid sign-ups in July 2026 after the K3 launch, so check current availability. Prices on the mainland China version are set in yuan and differ.

Kimi pros and cons

How to get started with Kimi

1. Go to kimi.com or install the Kimi app and sign in.
2. Start with a normal chat or upload a long document.
3. Try Agent mode with a clear goal, such as building a five-slide deck.
4. Check how many agent credits each task uses.
5. Upgrade to Moderato if you need K3 or more agent tasks.

Tips to get better results from Kimi

• Give agents detailed goals, formats and audiences to save credits on revisions.
• Use plain chat for simple questions so your agent credits last longer.
• Verify facts and figures in research reports against the cited sources.
• Avoid uploading confidential files unless your organisation approves the service.

Kimi vs alternatives

Kimi competes most directly with DeepSeek and Qwen Chat, two other Chinese assistants with open models. DeepSeek is simpler and cheaper, Qwen Chat is free with more media tools, and Kimi stands out for long-context reading and agent work. Manus and Genspark are the closest rivals for agent-style tasks that produce finished files.

Against ChatGPT and Claude, Kimi is competitive on research and agents but offers fewer integrations and raises data-residency questions for some businesses. See all best AI chatbot and assistant tools.

Our verdict: is Kimi worth it?

Kimi FAQs

Pricing and features change often. Details on this page were last reviewed in October 2026. Always confirm current plans on the official Kimi website.