Codestral 2508 vs Kimi K3
Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost
Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models
Mistral's cutting-edge language model for coding released end of July 2025.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 256 K tokens
- Max output
- 205 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.300
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.900
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- $0.030
- Batch (input / output)
- $0.150 / $0.450
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- 07/30/2025
- Knowledge cutoff
- 2025-03
- API id
- mistralai/codestral-2508
Kimi K3 is a 2.8T parameter open-weight multimodal reasoning model from Moonshot AI.
- Reasoning estimated
- ▲
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- ▲1 M tokens
- Max output
- ▲944 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- $3.00
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- $15.00
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- $0.300
- Batch (input / output)
- $2.28 / $11.40
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- ▲07/16/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- —
- API id
- moonshotai/kimi-k3
Which is the better API choice: Codestral 2508 vs Kimi K3?
- Codestral 2508: cheapest input (90% less than Kimi K3)
- Codestral 2508: cheapest output
- Kimi K3: largest context (1 M)
- Kimi K3: the newest (07/16/2026)
- Kimi K3: most reasoning (estimated)
Codestral 2508 costs 90% less on input and 94% less on output than Kimi K3 ($0.300 / $0.900 versus $3.00 / $15.00 per million tokens). Kimi K3 accepts more context (1 M). On capabilities, Kimi K3 accepts images; Kimi K3 has a reasoning mode. Codestral 2508 and Kimi K3 offer a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
What would your product cost?
Estimate the monthly cost with your app's real volume. List prices, no cache or batch discounts.
With Codestral 2508 you save $96.90 a month versus Kimi K3 (92% less).
The 6 cheapest for this scenario (chat, last 12 months)
- 1Lyria 3 Pro Preview Google$0.00
- 2Lyria 3 Clip Preview Google$0.00
- 3Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen$0.97
- 4DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek$1.55
- 5Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral$1.90
- 6Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen$2.02
Paste your prompt: tokens and cost per model
Rough estimate (about 4 characters per token). Nothing is sent to any server.
Cost of sending it 1,000 times (input only)
- 1Codestral 2508 Mistral$0.023
- 2Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$0.152
- 3Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic$0.152
- 4Kimi K3 Moonshot$0.228
- 5Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$0.304
- 6Claude Opus 5 Anthropic$0.380
- 7Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic$0.760
- 8Claude Fable 5 Anthropic$0.760
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Frequently asked questions
Which is the better API choice: Codestral 2508 vs Kimi K3?
Codestral 2508 costs 90% less on input and 94% less on output than Kimi K3 ($0.300 / $0.900 versus $3.00 / $15.00 per million tokens). Kimi K3 accepts more context (1 M). On capabilities, Kimi K3 accepts images; Kimi K3 has a reasoning mode. Codestral 2508 and Kimi K3 offer a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
Which is cheaper: Codestral 2508 and Kimi K3?
Codestral 2508 is cheaper: $0.300 per million input tokens and $0.900 per million output tokens, versus $3.00 / $15.00 for Kimi K3.
Which has more context: Codestral 2508 and Kimi K3?
Kimi K3 accepts 1 M tokens of context; Codestral 2508 accepts 256 K.
Which is newer: Codestral 2508 and Kimi K3?
Kimi K3 was released on 07/16/2026; Codestral 2508 on 07/30/2025.
What would 10,000 requests a month cost with Codestral 2508 and Kimi K3?
With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: Codestral 2508: $8.10; Kimi K3: $105.00 a month, at list price.
Where do the prices come from and how often are they updated?
From the public catalogs of OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM, which publish each provider's list prices. They sync once a day and the last update date is shown above the comparison.
What does price per million tokens mean?
It is what the provider charges per million tokens you send (input) or the model generates (output). A token is roughly 4 characters. Output almost always costs more than input.
Sources: OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM. Prices in USD per million tokens, list price, no volume discounts. Prompt tokens are an estimate; each provider's tokenizer may differ.