Kimi

Why we recommend Kimi

Kimi (Moonshot AI) started in 2023 rewriting the long-context game (200K → 500K → 1M), and by 2026 has become China's most research-flavored frontier lab: K3 flagship with 1M context, K2.7 Code for programming, K2.6 for multimodal — a complete Kimi family.

Brand & platform relationship. The "Kimi" product surfaces split across three domains:

• C-end (kimi.com) — Kimi chat web / App / Kimi Code subscription (Kimi Code Plan 4-tier personal subscription). The "Visit official site" button at the top points here.
• API Platform (platform.kimi.com) — developer console, API keys, pay-as-you-go billing, Tool Calling. The "Subscribe on kimi.com" buttons on the right jump to the C-end subscription page; for raw API calls, go to platform.
• Company (moonshot.ai) — Moonshot AI corporate site.

All three share one Moonshot AI account — sign up once and you can use both.

Kimi Code Plan is the personal subscription — same shape as Zhipu's Coding Plan / Qwen's Token Plan: fixed monthly fee + soft quotas.

Note: the plans describe quota amounts (not Credits), and Kimi doesn't expose a Credits number. Andante unlocks K2.7 Code; Moderato and above unlock K3.

In practice, kimi.com/code is the Coding Plan entry — one subscription unlocks Terminal / IDE / Web. The CLI is Kimi Code (Windows install: irm https://code.kimi.com/kimi-code/install.ps1 | iex).

API billing is separate: platform.kimi.com is pay-per-token. K3 flagship ¥20/1M input, ¥100/1M output, ¥2/1M cache hit. OpenAI-compatible — swap baseURL and plug in.

If your project needs 1M context + reliable China access + full IDE integration + soft-quota subscription, Kimi Code Plan is a strong 2026 pick.