Kimi K2.5 vs MiniMax M2.5
MiniMax M2.5 costs less on both: $0.162 in and $0.648 out per million tokens, against $0.27 in and $1.35 out for Kimi K2.5. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
| Tokens | Kimi K2.5kimi-k2.5 | MiniMax M2.5minimax-m2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.27Moonshot AI lists $0.45 · 40% under | $0.162MiniMax lists $0.30 · 46% under |
| Cached input | $0.042Moonshot AI lists $0.07 · 40% under | $0.0162MiniMax lists $0.03 · 46% under |
| Output | $1.35Moonshot AI lists $2.25 · 40% under | $0.648MiniMax lists $1.20 · 46% under |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens | 204,800 tokens |
| Max output | 262,144 tokens | 204,800 tokens |
| Input | text, image, video | text |
| Released | 2026-01-27 | 2026-02-12 |
| Formats | OpenAI SDK | OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | Moonshot AI | MiniMax |
List price: each developer's published rate, read October 2026. A model with no cached rate bills cached tokens at its input rate. Live from GET https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/catalog.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | Kimi K2.5 | MiniMax M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $1.22list $2.03 | $0.648list $1.20 |
| 100 long documents | $1.62list $2.70 | $0.9396list $1.74 |
| A month of both, daily | $85.05list $141.75 | $47.63list $88.20 |
A chat request is 2,000 input and 500 output tokens; a long document is 50,000 in and 2,000 out; the month is 1,000 chats and 100 documents a day for 30 days, uncached. Over that month MiniMax M2.5 costs $37.42 less here.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The request below calls Kimi K2.5; put minimax-m2.5 in the model field to call MiniMax M2.5 instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"kimi-k2.5","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Questions
- Which costs less, Kimi K2.5 or MiniMax M2.5?
- MiniMax M2.5 costs less on both: $0.162 in and $0.648 out per million tokens, against $0.27 in and $1.35 out for Kimi K2.5.
- Can I switch between them by changing the model id?
- Yes. Both answer in the OpenAI SDK format at the same base URL with the same key. Change the model id from kimi-k2.5 to minimax-m2.5 and nothing else.
- Is there a subscription?
- No. Prepaid credit from $10, with no subscription or monthly fee. Each top-up locks your prices for 30 days.
- Is Kimi K2.5 better than MiniMax M2.5?
- Better depends on the job; this page compares what the catalog can measure. MiniMax M2.5 costs less on both: $0.162 in and $0.648 out per million tokens, against $0.27 in and $1.35 out for Kimi K2.5. Kimi K2.5 takes 262,144 tokens of context against 204,800 for MiniMax M2.5. MiniMax M2.5 is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.