---
title: "Cheaper alternatives to Kimi K3 · Undominated.ai"
canonical: https://undominated.ai/alternatives/moonshotai__kimi-k3/
description: "7 models score at least as high as Kimi K3 and cost no more on a balanced workload. 1 give up nothing measurable; the other 6 name what they drop. Measured prices and independent scores."
---

# Cheaper alternatives to Kimi K3 · Undominated.ai

> 7 models score at least as high as Kimi K3 and cost no more on a balanced workload. 1 give up nothing measurable; the other 6 name what they drop. Measured prices and independent scores.

# Cheaper alternatives to Kimi K3

Moonshot AI · LMArena 1476.3 · $6.00/M on a balanced workload · prices as of 2026-08-28

## 1 model is both better and cheaper, giving up nothing.

Of the 133 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, **7** score at least as high as Kimi K3 and cost no more under at least one workload. **1** matches or beats it on every capability we hold — context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning. **6** do not, and every row names what it drops.

Dominance is not a property of a model. It is a property of a model, a capability lens and a workload, and all three are named on every row. Scores are LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset; prices are blended per million tokens. A higher score is not a drop-in replacement.

This page is built from that comparison and nothing else. When no model is both better and cheaper than Kimi K3, it is not generated.

## Where it holds

| Workload | Kimi K3 $/M | Better and cheaper | With a trade |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Balanced | $6.00 | 1 | 6 |
| Summarise | $2.83 | 1 | 6 |
| Chat | $6.99 | 1 | 6 |
| Code gen | $9.98 | 1 | 6 |
| Agentic | $3.19 | 1 | 6 |

Workload mixes are defined on the [methodology page](/methodology/). Cached input is priced at the cached rate, and reasoning tokens at the worse of the reasoning and output rates.

## What you would be replacing

| Intelligence | 1476.3 |
| --- | --- |
| Context window | 1.0M |
| Max output | 944K |
| Input modes | text, image, video |
| Tool use | yes |
| Extended reasoning | yes |

A replacement has to clear every line above, not just the score. [Full record for Kimi K3](/models/moonshotai__kimi-k3/).

## Better and cheaper, nothing given up 1

Each of these matches or beats Kimi K3 on context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and reasoning, scores at least as high, and costs no more.

| # | Model | Intelligence | $/M | Holds under |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Muse Spark 1.1 Meta | 1478.3 tie | $2.00 | Balanced −67% Summarise −62% Chat −70% Code gen −70% Agentic −67% |

## Cheaper and higher-scoring, but you give something up 6

These score at least as high and cost no more on the two plotted axes, and lose something that is not on them. Read the last column before switching.

| Model | Intelligence | $/M | Holds under | What you give up |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gemini 3.7 Flash Google | 1490.2 +13.9 | $0.750 | Balanced −88% Summarise −88% Chat −87% Code gen −88% Agentic −87% | 944K → 66K max output |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Google | 1482.6 tie | $3.38 | Balanced −44% Summarise −47% Chat −41% Code gen −41% Agentic −43% | 944K → 66K max output |
| Qwen3.8 Max Qwen | 1481.9 tie | $3.00 | Balanced −50% Summarise −40% Chat −56% Code gen −57% Agentic −51% | 1.0M → 1.0M context 944K → 131K max output |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash Google | 1476.5 tie | $1.50 | Balanced −75% Summarise −75% Chat −75% Code gen −75% Agentic −75% | 944K → 66K max output |
| GLM 5.3 Z.ai | 1476.9 tie | $2.15 | Balanced −64% Summarise −57% Chat −68% Code gen −69% Agentic −63% | 944K → 131K max output no image, video input |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview Google | 1479.5 tie | $4.50 | Balanced −25% Summarise −30% Chat −22% Code gen −21% Agentic −24% | 944K → 66K max output |

## What this compares, and what it leaves out

 - Quality is LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset. The 95% confidence interval on a difference between two scores is about ±10.68 points, so a gap smaller than that is marked *tie* rather than an improvement — see [significance bands](/significance/).
 - 188 further models at this delivery mode carry a price but no independent score. They are absent from the comparison in both directions — unrated is not a zero, and an unmeasured model is neither an alternative nor a worse buy.
 - Retired models are never offered as an alternative, and a model only competes against its own delivery mode: batch trades latency for price, so it is not a like-for-like swap.
 - Nothing here measures latency, throughput, rate limits or how a model behaves on your prompts. Two models with the same index score are not interchangeable.
 - The models that nothing beats on both axes are on the [value frontier](/frontier/), and every other model something cheaper beats is [listed here](/alternatives/).