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# Kimi K3

> Kimi K3 is Moonshot's flagship reasoning model with a 1M token context, always-on thinking, native web search, and text, image, and video inputs.

![Kimi K3](https://media.empiriolabs.ai/model-logos/kimi.png)

[Moonshot AI](/providers/moonshot) · Text Generation

`POST /v1/chat/completions`

Kimi K3 is Moonshot's flagship reasoning model with a 1M token context, always-on thinking, native web search, and text, image, and video inputs.

## At a glance

| Field               | Value                                                                                                                 |
| ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Model id            | `kimi-k3`                                                                                                             |
| Model release date  | 2026-07-15                                                                                                            |
| Input modalities    | Text, Image, Video                                                                                                    |
| Output modalities   | Text                                                                                                                  |
| Context window      | 1M                                                                                                                    |
| Weight precision    | -                                                                                                                     |
| Max output tokens   | 131,072                                                                                                               |
| Region              | International                                                                                                         |
| Features            | reasoning, function_calling, multimodal, agentic_coding, web_search                                                   |
| Native inference    | No                                                                                                                    |
| New                 | No                                                                                                                    |
| Structured output   | JSON Schema                                                                                                           |
| Supported endpoints | `POST /v1/chat/completions`, `POST /v1/responses`, `POST /v1/messages`, `POST /v1beta/models/kimi-k3:generateContent` |
| Alternate model ids | `moonshotai/kimi-k3`                                                                                                  |

## Pricing

| Charge     | Spec                    | Rate    |
| ---------- | ----------------------- | ------- |
| Input      | per 1M prompt tokens    | \$3.00  |
| Output     | per 1M generated tokens | \$15.00 |
| Web search | per call when invoked   | \$0.015 |

## Example request

```bash
curl https://api.empiriolabs.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer $EMPIRIOLABS_API_KEY' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model": "kimi-k3", "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'
```

## Parameters

| Parameter          | Type    | Required | Default | Description                                                                                                                                                                       |
| ------------------ | ------- | -------- | ------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `max_tokens`       | number  | no       | `32768` | Maximum output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit. · Range: 1 – 1048576                                                                                             |
| `stop`             | string  | no       | -       | Up to 4 strings where the model will stop generating further tokens.                                                                                                              |
| `reasoning_effort` | enum    | no       | `"max"` | Kimi K3 reasoning effort. Thinking is always on. Higher effort spends more reasoning tokens before answering. Max is recommended and the default. · Allowed: `low`, `high`, `max` |
| `tool_web_search`  | boolean | no       | false   | Search the web for real-time information. Adds \$0.015 to the request cost for each invoked web search call.                                                                      |
| `max_tool_calls`   | number  | no       | `5`     | Max number of web searches the model can run in one request. Each search is billed separately. · Range: 1 – 20                                                                    |
| `response_format`  | enum    | no       | -       | Constrain the output to JSON. Use JSON mode for any valid JSON object, or JSON schema to force output that matches a schema you provide.                                          |

## Notes

Supports text, image, and video inputs with a 1M token context, function calling, JSON schema structured output, and built-in web search at \$0.015 per invoked call. Thinking is always on; reasoning depth is tunable with the reasoning_effort control (max is recommended) and reasoning tokens are billed as output tokens. Temperature and other sampling settings are fixed by the model service. Multi-step function calling through the API must replay the assistant message with its reasoning_content field intact.

**Per-tool billing (`usage.tool_usage`)**

When this model invokes built-in tools inside a single request, the response carries a normalized `usage.tool_usage` map alongside the token counts. Tool counts are already factored into `cost_usd` and are surfaced for transparency.

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*Machine-readable schema:* `GET https://api.empiriolabs.ai/v1/models/kimi-k3`.