Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B
Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost
Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models
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
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is an open-weight multimodal model from Alibaba Cloud with 35 billion total parameters and 3 billion active parameters per token.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 262 K tokens
- Max output
- 236 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.150
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$1.00
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- $0.050
- Batch (input / output)
- —
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- 04/17/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- —
- API id
- qwen/qwen3.6-35b-a3b
Which is the better API choice: Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B?
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B: cheapest input (95% less than Kimi K3)
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B: cheapest output
- Kimi K3: largest context (1 M)
- Kimi K3: the newest (07/16/2026)
Qwen3.6 35B A3B costs 95% less on input and 93% less on output than Kimi K3 ($0.150 / $1.00 versus $3.00 / $15.00 per million tokens). Kimi K3 accepts more context (1 M). Kimi K3 offers 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 Qwen3.6 35B A3B you save $98.75 a month versus Kimi K3 (94% 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)
- 1Qwen3.6 35B A3B Qwen$0.011
- 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: Kimi K3 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B A3B costs 95% less on input and 93% less on output than Kimi K3 ($0.150 / $1.00 versus $3.00 / $15.00 per million tokens). Kimi K3 accepts more context (1 M). Kimi K3 offers a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
Which is cheaper: Kimi K3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B A3B is cheaper: $0.150 per million input tokens and $1.00 per million output tokens, versus $3.00 / $15.00 for Kimi K3.
Which has more context: Kimi K3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B?
Kimi K3 accepts 1 M tokens of context; Qwen3.6 35B A3B accepts 262 K.
Which is newer: Kimi K3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B?
Kimi K3 was released on 07/16/2026; Qwen3.6 35B A3B on 04/17/2026.
What would 10,000 requests a month cost with Kimi K3 and Qwen3.6 35B A3B?
With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: Kimi K3: $105.00; Qwen3.6 35B A3B: $6.25 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.