MISTRAL VS MOONSHOT AI
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Kimi K2.6
Kimi K2.6 is about 1.8x cheaper than Mistral Medium 3.5 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.0175 vs $0.03. Both models have the same 262,144-token context window.
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | $1.50 | $7.50 | $3.00 |
| Kimi K2.6 | $0.95 | $4.00 | $1.713 |
Rates from official Mistral pricing and official Moonshot AI pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
What a real workload costs
Example: one request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens, then that request at 100,000 runs per month.
| Model | Per request (10K in / 2K out) | Per month (100K requests) | Monthly delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | $0.03 | $3,000 | +$1,250 |
| Kimi K2.6 | $0.0175 | $1,750 | — |
Model your own prompt sizes and volumes in the token cost analyzer, or check caching savings with the prompt caching calculator.
Specs side by side
| Spec | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Kimi K2.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral | Moonshot AI |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens | 262,144 tokens |
| Model class | General text | General text |
| Tokenizer | Proprietary (counts estimated) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: Mistral Medium 3.5 token counter and Kimi K2.6 token counter. All Mistral models are on the Mistral Token Counter. All Moonshot AI models are on the Kimi Token Counter.
FAQ
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Kimi K2.6 FAQ
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Kimi K2.6?
Kimi K2.6 is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, Mistral Medium 3.5 costs $1.50 input / $7.50 output per 1M tokens, while Kimi K2.6 costs $0.95 input / $4.00 output — about a 1.8x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Kimi K2.6?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.03 on Mistral Medium 3.5 and $0.0175 on Kimi K2.6. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $3,000 vs $1,750 — a difference of $1,250 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Kimi K2.6?
They are equal: both support 262,144 tokens of context, roughly 197,000 English words shared between prompt and response.
Do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Kimi K2.6 count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. Mistral Medium 3.5 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates) and Kimi K2.6 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.