Kimi K2.5 matches Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.5. I have been running it as a coding agent for the past week, and for the first time, I cannot tell the difference between an open-source model and the best proprietary work from Anthropic or OpenAI.
The model runs through OpenCode and other agents. Access it at platform.moonshot.ai or read the quickstart guide.
K2.5 ships with 1 trillion parameters but activates only 32 billion at a time. This MoE architecture cuts hardware requirements. Alex Cheema ran the full model at 24 tokens per second using two M3 Ultra Mac Studios with 512GB RAM each, connected via Thunderbolt 5 RDMA.
Running Kimi K2.5 on my desk.
— Alex Cheema - e/acc (@alexocheema) January 28, 2026
Runs at 24 tok/sec with 2 x 512GB M3 Ultra Mac Studios connected with Thunderbolt 5 (RDMA) using @exolabs / MLX backend.
Yes, it can run clawdbot. pic.twitter.com/ssbEeztz2V
The license is MIT with one catch: if your product exceeds 100 million monthly active users or $20 million in monthly revenue, you must display ‘Kimi K2.5’ in your interface. For most applications, this is free.
The model processes video. Feed it mp4, mpeg, mov, avi, or webm files and it understands context well. This works for images too: png, jpeg, webp, gif.
Moonshot offers subscriptions through kimi.com that include a coding agent called Kimi Code. Three tiers:
Moderato is free for seven days. You get extended agent quota, multi-tasking, 4x speed and priority access, higher K2.5 speed and quota, Kimi Code access, and visual slides with Nano Banana.
Allegretto costs $39 monthly. It includes everything from Moderato plus 2x agent quota, 2x K2.5 usage quota, 3.5x Kimi Code quota, unlimited slides, and access to Agent Swarm for batch tasks and long writing.
Vivace costs $199 monthly. It includes everything from Moderato plus 10x agent quota, 2x agent multi-tasking, priority during peak hours, 10x K2.5 usage, 17.5x Kimi Code quota, unlimited slides, and Agent Swarm.
Kimi Code is a CLI tool built for dev workflows. Install it with curl -L code.kimi.com/install.sh | bash.
Platform pricing starts low. Check current rates at platform.moonshot.ai.
Some users access K2.5 through NanoGPT for $8 monthly. This gets you Kimi K2 Thinking and the 0905 model.
This release lands one year after DeepSeek V3. Chinese labs have shipped models at a pace that defies expectations: DeepSeek’s V3 and R1, Kimi’s previous releases, GLM’s 4.5 through 4.7, MiniMax-M2, and the Qwen family. Western open-source kept pace with Mistral, Gemma, and GPT-OSS.
Chinese companies time major releases before Lunar New Year. With February 17 approaching, expect more.