LOADING DATASHEET
GROUNDED IN REAL HUMAN CONVERSATIONSYOUR BENCH
Kimi K2
◆ OPEN
by Moonshot
OPEN WEIGHTSLOCALAPILONG CONTEXTPAIDCLOSED
RANKED #47 OF 228 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #79 OF 6,618 · VIBE SCORE 6.4 · 350 VOICES
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...
HAPPY9.3
62 mentions
SAD5.7
21 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 126 voices
HOLDING UP
Recent vibe is steady. No clear fade in the crowd.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download Kimi K2 once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
1T total parameters (32B active MoE); a Q4 quant requires roughly 550 GB to 600 GB of memory.
- 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
- FULL POWER
Dedicated enterprise node with 8x NVIDIA H100 80GB SXM
640 GB HBM3
~$280000 NEWNative FP8/BF16, full throughput at 60+ tok/s, full 256k context window
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 ( | FULL POWERDedicated enterprise node with 8x NVIDIA H100 80GB SXM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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. A DASH MEANS NO SPEED WAS RESEARCHED FOR THAT RIG. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
People are mostly happy with Kimi K2. Biggest praise: writing. Biggest gripe: saying no too much.
292 POSTS · 58 COMMENTS · REDDIT · HACKER NEWS · X · GITHUB · LEMMY · BLUESKY · DEV.TO · BLOG
PEOPLE LOVE
- Good at writing and wording things (11 mentions)
- People feel it is worth the money (5 mentions)
- Popular for coding help (9 mentions)
- Answers come back fast (4 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
- WritingPEOPLE LOVE THIS
11 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
- PriceMOSTLY POSITIVE
5 thumbs up · 4 thumbs down
- Help with codePEOPLE LOVE THIS
9 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- SpeedPEOPLE LOVE THIS
4 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
- Getting facts rightPEOPLE LOVE THIS
4 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
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
- FROM REDDIT >
“Both were first try as well, but Opus is so much more expensive :/.”
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for Kimi K2.
DeepSeek Reasoner
GLM 5.3> 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 · 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
- REDDIT · 2025-07-13 · 223 UPVOTESKimi k2 an open source just surpassed o3 in creative writing and eq bench !!
Kimi k2 an open source just surpassed o3 in creative writing and eq bench !!