Head-to-head comparison
Kimi K3 (Moonshot AI) and GPT-5.5 (OpenAI) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 22 September 2026
As of 22 September 2026, Kimi K3 holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#12 vs #13); and Kimi K3 is 2× cheaper per output token ($15.00/1M vs $30.00/1M).
Evidence: 6 public benchmark observations across 6 boards · 7 public benchmark observations across 7 boards. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
Kimi K3 ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 22 September 2026: #12 against #13. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals overlap, so the rank difference alone does not establish a reliable capability advantage for your workload.
Kimi K3 is cheaper on output tokens: $15.00/1M against $30.00/1M. Input tokens are $3.00/1M for Kimi K3 and $5.00/1M for GPT-5.5. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens. For 1,000 requests with 2,000 input and 500 output tokens each (2M input + 0.5M output), the listed-rate estimate is $13.50 for Kimi K3 versus $25.00 for GPT-5.5. Kimi K3 costs 46.0% less in this scenario. This excludes caching, batch discounts, prompt-length tiers, tool charges and retries; verify the selected endpoint before budgeting.
Both publish a 1M-token context window.
Arena coding: Kimi K3 1538, GPT-5.5 1520 — Kimi K3 leads.
Kimi K3: Restricted license. GPT-5.5: API only. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 17 API providers for Kimi K3 and 3 for GPT-5.5, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 22 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.