# Kimi K3 vs Claude Sonnet 5

On provider list prices, Kimi K3 costs $3 per million input tokens against $3 for Claude Sonnet 5: effectively level. Output is $15 against $15.

## Specifications

| | Kimi K3 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | Moonshot AI | Anthropic |
| Access | Open weights | API only |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| List price, input | $3 / M tokens | $3 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $15 / M tokens | $15 / M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.30 / M tokens | n/a |
| License | Not listed | Proprietary API |
| Fine-tunable | Yes | No |

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-21.

## What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $8,850 a month on Kimi K3 and $8,850 on Claude Sonnet 5 at list: a gap of $0.

## Choose Kimi K3 for

- Open weights you can fine-tune and own
- Published cached-input pricing ($0.30 per M tokens)

## Choose Claude Sonnet 5 for

- Judgment calls with policy context
- Customer-facing writing
- Review and escalation flows

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Kimi K3, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $3/$15 per million tokens in and out against $3/$15 for Claude Sonnet 5. Billed on Allocate: $3.21/$16.05 against $3.21/$16.05.

### Which has the bigger context window?

They match: both read 1,000,000 tokens (1M) per request.

### Can I fine-tune Kimi K3 or Claude Sonnet 5?

Kimi K3 publishes open weights (Not listed) and can be fine-tuned on your own data. Claude Sonnet 5 is a closed model served over API; its weights are not available.

---

[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/moonshotai-kimi-k3-vs-sonnet-5) · [Kimi K3](https://allocate.network/models/moonshotai-kimi-k3.md) · [Claude Sonnet 5](https://allocate.network/models/sonnet-5.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)