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GROUNDED IN REAL HUMAN CONVERSATIONSYOUR BENCH
Kimi K3
◆ OPEN
by Moonshot
OPEN WEIGHTSHOSTEDCODING HELPWRITING HELPFAST RESPONSES
RANKED #23 OF 270 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #37 OF 6,566 · VIBE SCORE 6.9 · 2,079 VOICES
A fast text and coding assistant built for everyday technical help.
HAPPY9.4
512 mentions
SAD5.6
155 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 3,354 voices
QUIETLY DEGRADING
Recent vibe and chatter are both sliding.
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 K3 once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
2.8T parameters (104B active), native 4-bit (MXFP4) is 1.56 TB, 1-bit GGUF is ~594 GB
- BARE MINIMUM
Apple MacBook Pro M1 Max (64 GB Unified Memory, 2 TB SSD)
64 GB UNIFIED MEMORY
~$1,300 USEDToo big for consumer RAM; runs at ~0.6 tok/s via WASTE SSD-streaming (3-bit quant)
- SWEET SPOT
Used Dual-Socket AMD EPYC Server (EPYC 7002/7003) with 1TB D
1 TB DDR4 RAM
~$7,300 USEDLoads 1-bit GGUF (~594 GB) entirely in RAM via llama.cpp, ~1-2 tok/s
- FULL POWER
NVIDIA DGX H100 / B200 Cluster (8x H100 80GB GPUs)
640 GB VRAM + 2TB SYSTEM RAM
~$300,000+ NEWFull native MXFP4 precision, 1M context, high throughput (~20+ tok/s)
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
- ✎ GUIDE · UNSLOTH DOCUMENTATIONKimi K3 - How to Run Locally
- ✎ GUIDE · GITHUBWASTE: Run the full 2.78-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 model beyond available RAM
- ✎ GUIDE · GITHUBDeltafin: Run full Kimi K3 on a single device
- ✎ GUIDE · GITHUBkimi-k3-in-c: A 2.78-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 running inference on a single CPU in 8.24 GB of RAM
WILL MY BOX RUN KIMI K3?
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 K3 takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMApple MacBook Pro M1 Max (64 GB Unified Memory, 2 TB SSD) | SWEET SPOTUsed Dual-Socket AMD EPYC Server (EPYC 7002/7003) with 1TB D | FULL POWERNVIDIA DGX H100 / B200 Cluster (8x H100 80GB GPUs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~14 MIN★★★★★ | ~5.6 MIN★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~42 MIN★★★★★ | ~17 MIN★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~3.7 HR★★★★★ | ~89 MIN★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~12 HR★★★★★ | ~4.6 HR★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~6.9 HR★★★★★ | ~2.8 HR★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
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
Users love Kimi K3 for its dependable coding help and fast answers, even tackling security fixes other models refuse. However, some complain about recent price hikes, preachy refusals, and occasional hallucinations.
1528 POSTS · 551 COMMENTS · BLUESKY · REDDIT · HACKER NEWS · X · DEV.TO · GITHUB · LEMMY · BLOG · DEV FORUMS
PEOPLE LOVE
- Popular for coding help (44 mentions)
- People feel it is worth the money (28 mentions)
- Stable and dependable (8 mentions)
- Answers come back fast (7 mentions)
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- Refuses or lectures more than people like (7 mentions)
- Sometimes makes things up (6 mentions)
TOPIC BY TOPIC
- Help with codePEOPLE LOVE THIS
44 thumbs up · 7 thumbs down
- PriceMOSTLY POSITIVE
28 thumbs up · 21 thumbs down
- Working when you need itMOSTLY POSITIVE
8 thumbs up · 5 thumbs down
- SpeedMOSTLY POSITIVE
7 thumbs up · 4 thumbs down
- Getting facts rightA SORE SPOT
3 thumbs up · 6 thumbs down
- WritingPEOPLE LOVE THIS
7 thumbs up · 1 thumbs down
- Saying no too muchA SORE SPOT
1 thumbs up · 7 thumbs down
- Long conversationsPEOPLE LOVE THIS
3 thumbs up · 0 thumbs down
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
- FROM REDDIT >
“Kimi K3 just fixed 15 critical security bugs that Codex and Fable refused because of “cyber guardrails”.”
- FROM REDDIT >
“Kimi K3 is now 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 K3.
Grok 4.6
Llama 4 Maverick
Qwen3.8 27B
GLM 5.3> SOURCES (12)
- REDDIT · 2026-07-27 · 3144 UPVOTESKimi K3 weights now released.
Kimi K3 weights now released.
- HACKER NEWS · 2026-07-16 · 2107 UPVOTESKimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligence
Kimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligence
- REDDIT · 2026-07-16 · 2041 UPVOTESKimi-K3 arrived: The era of the Chinese labs being far behind is over
Kimi-K3 arrived: The era of the Chinese labs being far behind is over
- REDDIT · 2026-07-20 · 1946 UPVOTESKimi K3 just fixed 15 critical security bugs that Codex and Fable refused because of “cyber guardrails”. Hugging Face: We had this…
Kimi K3 just fixed 15 critical security bugs that Codex and Fable refused because of “cyber guardrails”. Hugging Face: We had this experience ourselves this week! Very scary to be guardrailed as a defender when you know attackers are likely bypassing
- REDDIT · 2026-08-04 · 1724 UPVOTESKimi K3 full model running on 16x GB10 cluster at 20+tps
Kimi K3 full model running on 16x GB10 cluster at 20+tps
- REDDIT · 2026-07-20 · 1568 UPVOTESDavid Sacks says U.S. AI guardrails are making American models less competitive after China’s Kimi K3 fixed 15 security bugs that Codex and…
David Sacks says U.S. AI guardrails are making American models less competitive after China’s Kimi K3 fixed 15 security bugs that Codex and Fable refused
- HACKER NEWS · 2026-07-27 · 1382 UPVOTESKimi-K3 on HuggingFace
Kimi-K3 on HuggingFace
- X · 2026-08-14 · 1296 UPVOTES2 things are happening at once: - AI coding models are converging. For 95% of tasks, most people can’t tell whether GPT-
2 things are happening at once: - AI coding models are converging. For 95% of tasks, most people can’t tell whether GPT-
- X · 2026-08-18 · 1180 UPVOTESGLM-5.3 achieves 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 and up 7 points from GLM-5.2. Onc
GLM-5.3 achieves 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 and up 7 points from GLM-5.2. Onc
- REDDIT · 2026-07-16 · 1172 UPVOTESKimi K3 tops Frontend Code Arena
Kimi K3 tops Frontend Code Arena
- REDDIT · 2026-07-17 · 1071 UPVOTESKimi K3 is top of nextjs eval
Kimi K3 is top of nextjs eval
- REDDIT · 2026-08-02 · 1035 UPVOTESSetting up of a 16xGB10 (DGX Spark) cluster
Setting up of a 16xGB10 (DGX Spark) cluster