Kimi K2.6
Moonshot AI
PickAIModel.com - Kimi K2.6 Model Detail
Moonshot AI
Normal use: ~333 chats at published API rates.
PickAI Conversation Value measures buying power at published API rates using the shared standard conversation basket.
Standout feature
Kimi K2.6 - open-source coding value
Built for coding and autonomous task execution rather than general chat Strong long-horizon coding, planning, and tool-use consistency Standard $0.95 per million input and $4.00 per million output pricing gives it a sharp cost-efficiency case Creative writing and non-English/non-Chinese language coverage are weaker spots Sensitive-data use needs compliance review because Moonshot AI is China-based
Images and files
Best understood as an agentic coding model with visual and product-building capabilities, not a general consumer chat assistant.
PickAI benchmark
Move the usage slider to see how the monthly price translates into PickAI Conversation Value at published API rates.
PickAI conversation value
~333 chats
Usage intensity
One normal prompt, one full reply, and a couple of follow-up turns.
Selected tier
Kimi Membership
PickAI Conversation Value
~333 chats
Standard basket
3K tokens/chat
Normal use: ~333 chats at published API rates.
This estimate uses the shared normal conversation basket: 1,200 input tokens and 1,800 output tokens, or 3k tokens total. Standard conversation cost = (input tokens × API input price + output tokens × API output price) / 1,000,000.
API pricing basis: $0.16 / 1M input, $0.16 / 1M output
PickAI Conversation Value measures buying power at published API rates using the shared standard conversation basket.
| Tier | Monthly price | PickAI Conversation Value | Standard basket | Rate note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Free Free tier | $0 | Free tier | 3,000 tokens | Free access exists, but the vendor does not publish a fixed monthly token allowance for this hosted tier and practical limits vary by workload. |
Kimi MembershipPrimary Usage limits not disclosed | $0.16 | ~333 chats | 3,000 tokens | Usage limits vary by workload and should be checked against the vendor current plan controls. |
Consumer access
Consumer plan pricing is grounded in the current official vendor plan page.
Hosted app availability is grounded in the current official vendor surface.
What it feels like
Official ecosystem
These are the verified first-party tools or official product surfaces currently listed for Kimi K2.6. If there is no verified specialized tool beyond a general chat surface, this section stays minimal.
Only verified first-party surfaces are listed.
Released April 20, 2026, Kimi K2.6 is an open-source Moonshot AI model built for coding and autonomous task execution rather than general-purpose chat. Its best fit is teams that want near-flagship coding performance without flagship pricing. At $0.95 per million uncached input tokens and $4.00 per million output tokens, with cheaper cached input available, it gives cost-sensitive engineering teams a serious alternative to proprietary coding models. The tradeoff is polish: creative writing trails Claude and ChatGPT, English and Chinese are stronger than other languages, and response speed is slow compared with the fastest frontier options. It is also operated by a Chinese company under local data regulations, so government, defense, and heavily regulated teams should review compliance before sending sensitive work. Bottom line: Kimi K2.6 is a compelling Claude or GPT alternative for development work when cost efficiency matters more than raw polish.
Head-to-head pages
Continue Research
This is a buyer-facing summary of the hosted product experience, not a verbatim vendor claim.
For cautious buyers
Privacy guidance is summarized conservatively for buyers and should be checked against the vendor current controls.
| Benchmark | Metric | Axis | Weight | Contribution | Score | Source | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Humanity's Last Exam Live source acquisition | Normalized quality input | VALUEQUALITY | VALUE: 40% [SMARTNESS] QUALITY: 66.7% active / 50% base [REASONING] | Contributes 0 pts (missing data) to Value score Contributes 0.0 pts to Quality score | 18.2% | Artificial Analysis - Humanity's Last Exam evaluation Third-party benchmark evaluation page used only after the official HLE leaderboard sources fail to yield a usable result. | 2026-05-24 |
SWE-Bench Pro |
| Software engineering task resolution |
QUALITY |
QUALITY: 33.3% active / 25% base [CODING] |
Contributes 17.2 pts to Quality score |
| 58.6% |
| Moonshot AI Kimi K2.6 model-card eval results Moonshot AI Kimi K2.6 model-card eval result file. Result is vendor-published and should display with source provenance. Retained from the previous published snapshot because the current live source did not expose this benchmark row. Retained from the previous published snapshot because the current live source did not expose this benchmark row. Retained from the previous published snapshot because the current live source did not expose this benchmark row. |
| 2026-05-05 |
Terminal-Bench 2.0 Moonshot AI Kimi K2.6 Terminal-Bench 2.0 eval result | Agentic terminal task completion | Reference only | Not used in Quality or Value scoring. | Informational evidence only. | 66.7% | Moonshot AI Kimi K2.6 model-card eval results Moonshot AI Kimi K2.6 model-card eval result file for harborframework/terminal-bench-2.0. Result is vendor-published and should display with source provenance. Retained from the previous published snapshot because the current live source did not expose this benchmark row. Retained from the previous published snapshot because the current live source did not expose this benchmark row. Retained from the previous published snapshot because the current live source did not expose this benchmark row. | 2026-05-05 |