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Kimi K2
◆ OPEN
by Moonshot
OPEN WEIGHTSLOCALAPILONG CONTEXTPAIDREASONING
RANKED #62 OF 316 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #85 OF 493 RANKED · VIBE SCORE 6.2 · 890 VOICES ·
COPY BADGE pastes a README snippet with the rank SVG.
Kimi K2 Thinking is Moonshot AI’s most advanced open reasoning model to date, extending the K2 series into agentic, long-horizon reasoning. Built on the trillion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture introduced in...
HAPPY8.8
151 mentions
SAD6.2
76 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 336 voices in this window
HONEYMOON FADING
Early praise is cooling off in recent weeks.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
FROM THE MODEL CARD
Official published numbers, not a street-price estimate.
- PARAMETERS
- 1T total / 32B active
- CONTEXT
- 256K
- WEIGHTS
- block-FP8, ~1,029 GB
- DEPLOY
- 16x H200
- LICENSE
- Modified MIT
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download Kimi K2 once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
- BARE MINIMUM
Custom multi-GPU rig (e.g. 8x NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB used) or
192 GB VRAM PLUS 512 GB SYSTEM RAM
~$7500 USEDModel is too large for standard consumer hardware. At heavy offloading/Q2/Q3 it runs very slowly at 1 to 4 tok/s.
- SWEET SPOT
Apple Mac Studio M2 Ultra cluster or multi-GPU workstation (
192 GB TO 512 GB UNIFIED VRAM
~$16000 BUILTINT4 or Q4 quant via KTransformers/vLLM, ~15 to 25 tok/s, 32k context
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
WILL MY BOX RUN KIMI K2?
The three cards above are researched picks. Search the machine you actually have — we only say yes if it should reply at a usable speed, not just load the weights and crawl.
HARDWARE PICKS & PRICES ARE RESEARCHED FROM THE LIVE WEB AND REFRESHED AUTOMATICALLY. TREAT THEM AS BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT?
Everyday jobs on each of those rigs: how long Kimi K2 takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMCustom multi-GPU rig (e.g. 8x NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB used) or | SWEET SPOTApple Mac Studio M2 Ultra cluster or multi-GPU workstation ( |
|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~3.3 MIN★★★★★ | ~25 S★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~10 MIN★★★★★ | ~75 S★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~53 MIN★★★★★ | ~6.7 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~2.8 HR★★★★★ | ~21 MIN★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~1.7 HR★★★★★ | ~13 MIN★★★★★ |
STARS ARE THE COMMUNITY SCORE FOR THAT KIND OF WORK, DOCKED FOR HOW SQUASHED THE WEIGHTS GET AT EACH TIER. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
People are mostly happy with Kimi K2. Biggest praise: help with code. Biggest gripe: saying no too much.
713 POSTS · 177 COMMENTS · REDDIT · HACKER NEWS · X · DEV.TO · GITHUB · LEMMY · BLUESKY · BLOG
PEOPLE LOVE
- People feel it is worth the money (13 mentions)
- Popular for coding help (15 mentions)
- Good at writing and wording things (12 mentions)
- Usually gives correct answers (7 mentions)
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- Outages, errors, or limits get in the way (2 mentions)
- Refuses or lectures more than people like (2 mentions)
TOPIC BY TOPIC
- PricePEOPLE LOVE THIS
13 thumbs up · 4 thumbs down
- Help with codePEOPLE LOVE THIS
15 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
- WritingPEOPLE LOVE THIS
12 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
- Getting facts rightMOSTLY POSITIVE
7 thumbs up · 3 thumbs down
- SpeedPEOPLE LOVE THIS
6 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- Working when you need itMIXED FEELINGS
2 thumbs up · 2 thumbs down
- Saying no too muchA SORE SPOT
1 thumbs up · 2 thumbs down
- Long conversationsMOSTLY POSITIVE
2 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for Kimi K2.
Muse Spark 1.3
DeepSeek V4 Flash> SOURCES (12)
- REDDIT · 2025-11-06 · 1122 UPVOTESThe chinese did it, KIMI K2 surpassed GPT-5.
The chinese did it, KIMI K2 surpassed GPT-5.
- HACKER NEWS · 2025-11-06 · 936 UPVOTESKimi K2 Thinking, a SOTA open-source trillion-parameter reasoning model
Kimi K2 Thinking, a SOTA open-source trillion-parameter reasoning model
- REDDIT · 2025-07-23 · 897 UPVOTESWe are accelerating faster than people realise. Every week is overwhelming
We are accelerating faster than people realise. Every week is overwhelming
- REDDIT · 2026-02-17 · 587 UPVOTESCar Wash Test on 53 leading models: “I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?”
Car Wash Test on 53 leading models: “I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?”
- REDDIT · 2026-03-20 · 440 UPVOTESIndeed, Composer 2 is kimi k2
Indeed, Composer 2 is kimi k2
- REDDIT · 2025-11-17 · 410 UPVOTESKimi K2 Thinking is now available on Perplexity
Kimi K2 Thinking is now available on Perplexity
- REDDIT · 2026-03-16 · 406 UPVOTESINCREDIBLE STUFF INCOMING
INCREDIBLE STUFF INCOMING
- REDDIT · 2025-11-06 · 398 UPVOTESKimi K2 Thinking, A Chinese Open-Source Trillion-Parameter Thinking model, surpass Grok 4 and GPT-5 on HLE
Kimi K2 Thinking, A Chinese Open-Source Trillion-Parameter Thinking model, surpass Grok 4 and GPT-5 on HLE
- REDDIT · 2025-07-11 · 288 UPVOTESKimi K2: New SoTA non-reasoning model 1T parameters open-source and outperforms DeepSeek-v3.1 and GPT-4.1 by a large margin
Kimi K2: New SoTA non-reasoning model 1T parameters open-source and outperforms DeepSeek-v3.1 and GPT-4.1 by a large margin
- REDDIT · 2025-10-06 · 283 UPVOTESDo you still stick with DeepSeek despite the gazillion other models available right now?
Do you still stick with DeepSeek despite the gazillion other models available right now?
- REDDIT · 2026-05-08 · 232 UPVOTESMade the switch to DeepSeek and here are my thoughts as a long time Claude user (spoiler: it's great)
Made the switch to DeepSeek and here are my thoughts as a long time Claude user (spoiler: it's great)
- REDDIT · 2025-07-21 · 227 UPVOTESKimi K2 is already irrelevant, and it's only been like 1 week. Qwen has updated Qwen-3-235B, and it outperforms K2 at less than 1/4th the…
Kimi K2 is already irrelevant, and it's only been like 1 week. Qwen has updated Qwen-3-235B, and it outperforms K2 at less than 1/4th the size