# Kimi K3.1 Pro reaches frontier-tier agent benchmarks at $2/$10 — weights are promised, not shipped Moonshot launched Kimi K3.1 Pro on October 23 with a million-token context window and $2/$10 per-million-token API pricing. Independent testing puts it near the leading proprietary models, but it is still API-only until promised weights arrive by November 4. Kimi K3.1 Pro ships via API at $2 input/$10 output per million tokens, with a 2–3x faster Highspeed tier. Independent Artificial Analysis testing scores 55 on its Intelligence Index and 67% on Terminal-Bench 4.0. Open weights remain promised, not released. - Status: Active - Published: 2026-10-26T08:36:44+13:00 - Updated: 2026-10-26T08:36:44+13:00 - Categories: Artificial Intelligence, AI Models, Open Models - Tags: AI models, Coding agents, inference pricing, Kimi, Moonshot AI, open weights - Canonical HTML: https://beyondthe.news/dossiers/kimi-k3-1-pro-frontier-agent-benchmarks-api-pricing-open-weights-november-2026 ## What changed On October 23, 2026, Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3.1 Pro and K3.1 Pro Highspeed through its web products and API. The base model accepts text and images, offers a 1-million-token context window and is priced at $2 per million input tokens, $10 per million output tokens and $0.20 per million cached-input tokens. Moonshot says Highspeed is two to three times faster at roughly twice the regular input/output rates. The company calls K3.1 Pro open-weight in its announcement but explicitly says the full weights will only be released by November 4; as of October 25 they are not yet available. Independent Artificial Analysis testing gives K3.1 Pro an Intelligence Index score of 55, 67% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, and an average cost around $2.11 per benchmark task. ## Why it matters A frontier-class coding and agent model available at a lower API rate than many leading alternatives changes model-selection economics for builders who measure outcomes rather than only tokens. But the model is verbose, and a cheap token price does not guarantee a cheap completed task. The independent benchmark's 73.5 output tokens/second is below its 81-token/second comparison median, and its task cost and long-running performance matter for agent workloads. Local deployment, licence terms and unrestricted fine-tuning cannot be assumed until the weights and licence actually ship. ## The independent comparison is promising but task-specific Artificial Analysis ranks K3.1 Pro fourth on its October 23 Intelligence Index with a score of 55, and reports 67% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 versus 13% for Kimi K3. Its test records 55,000 output tokens per evaluated task and roughly $2.11 per task. The vendor separately reports 65.7% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 under its own setup, a reminder that harness, settings and task sampling can change scores. Simon Willison independently tested API availability with a small visual coding prompt, not a full production reliability audit. ## What the pricing actually buys The published Kimi API price is $2 input and $10 output per million tokens, with cached input at $0.20. The optional Highspeed endpoint is advertised as two to three times faster but more expensive; teams should benchmark end-to-end time and successful-task cost rather than assume it always wins. A 1M context window and text-plus-image input broaden possible workloads but do not establish reliable recall at maximum length. ## Open weights are still a future milestone Moonshot promises to release full K3.1 Pro weights by November 4, 2026. Until downloadable files, a licence and deployment guidance are actually available, K3.1 Pro should be treated as a proprietary hosted model for procurement and compliance decisions. Moonshot says it deliberately removed some cyber-related training data for the planned open release; its safety measurements are vendor-produced and should not be confused with independent security validation. ## Key details - Released October 23, 2026 via Kimi API and product family; Highspeed endpoint also available. - Official base API rates: $2 input, $10 output and $0.20 cache-hit per million tokens; 1M context. - Artificial Analysis independent Intelligence Index 55; Terminal-Bench 4.0 67%; approximately $2.11 per evaluation task. - Full weights promised by November 4, 2026; not published as of this research pass. - Independent speed measurement ~73.5 output tokens/sec; model is relatively verbose. ## Builder takeaways - Benchmark real tasks with your own tool-calling harness and measure cost per accepted result, not token prices or vendor leaderboards alone. - Keep an API fallback and rate/cost controls while evaluating the Highspeed trade-off. - Do not plan self-hosted deployment or infer an open-source licence until weight files and terms actually ship. ## What to watch - Whether full weights, licence, architecture details and reproducible serving guidance ship by November 4. - Independent coding-agent success rates, latency, hallucination and cost under production-like harnesses. - Whether API pricing, context limits or Highspeed capacity change after launch. ## Uncertainties - Artificial Analysis tests are independently run but benchmark scores may not predict a particular customer's workloads. - Moonshot's internal benchmark, security and post-training claims have not all been independently reproduced. - Weight publication is a promise, not a completed release; licence and hardware requirements are not yet confirmed. ## Sources - [Introducing Kimi K3.1 Pro](https://www.kimi.ai/blog/kimi-k3-1-pro) — Moonshot AI · primary_announcement · 2026-10-23T00:00:00+13:00. Launch, architecture, capabilities, promised weight date and vendor benchmark context. - [Model Inference Pricing Explanation](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat) — Kimi API · primary_pricing · 2026-10-23T00:00:00+13:00. Current model token pricing and Highspeed options; verify in console before buying. - [Kimi K3.1 Pro launch benchmarks](https://artificialanalysis.ai/pt/articles/kimi-k3-1-pro-launch-benchmarks) — Artificial Analysis · independent_benchmark · 2026-10-23T00:00:00+13:00. Independent Intelligence Index, Terminal-Bench, output tokens and cost per task. - [Kimi K3.1 Pro model analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/kimi-k3-1-pro) — Artificial Analysis · independent_measurement · 2026-10-23T00:00:00+13:00. Measured speed, context and price. - [Introducing Kimi K3.1 Pro](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/23/kimi-k31-pro/) — Simon Willison · independent_hands_on · 2026-10-23T00:00:00+13:00. API hands-on and differentiation between promised weights and current availability.