Kimi K2.6 vs Claude Opus 4.6
Kimi K2.6 costs less on both: $0.57 in and $2.40 out per million tokens, against $1.80 in and $7.50 out for Claude Opus 4.6. Both on one key at UplinkSwitch, each next to its developer's list price.
Prices · per million tokens, USD
Get a key| Tokens | Kimi K2.6kimi-k2.6 | Claude Opus 4.6claude-opus-4-6 |
|---|---|---|
| Input | $0.57Moonshot AI lists $0.95 · 40% under | $1.80Anthropic lists $5.00 · 64% under |
| Cached input | input rate | $0.16Anthropic lists $0.50 · 68% under |
| Output | $2.40Moonshot AI lists $4.00 · 40% under | $7.50Anthropic lists $25.00 · 70% under |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Max output | 262,144 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input | text, image, video | text, image |
| Released | 2026-04-20 | 2026-02-05 |
| Anthropic lifecycle | — | active, retires no sooner than 2027-02-05 |
| Formats | OpenAI SDK | Anthropic SDK, OpenAI SDK |
| Developer | Moonshot AI | Anthropic |
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. Lifecycle from Anthropic's model deprecations, read 2026-10-19.
What the same work costs · USD, here and at list
| Work | Kimi K2.6 | Claude Opus 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 chat requests | $2.34list $3.90 | $7.35list $22.50 |
| 100 long documents | $3.33list $5.55 | $10.50list $30.00 |
| A month of both, daily | $170.10list $283.50 | $535.50list $1,575.00 |
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 Kimi K2.6 costs $365.40 less here.
Newest in the line
- Claude Opus 5.5 is the newest in Claude Opus 4.6's line: $2.80 in and $10.00 out per million tokens here, against $4.00 and $20.00 at list.
Same key, same URL
One base URL and one key serve both models. The Kimi K2.6 API and the Claude Opus 4.6 API answer at the same base URL in the OpenAI format, so a client or SDK setup moves between them by changing the model id. The request below calls Kimi K2.6; put claude-opus-4-6 in the model field to call Claude Opus 4.6 instead.
shell
curl https://api.uplinkswitch.com/v1/chat/completions \
-H "authorization: Bearer sk-uplink-live-..." \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"kimi-k2.6","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Model pages: Kimi K2.6 API, Claude Opus 4.6 API. Pricing by family: Kimi, Claude. More comparisons: Kimi K3 vs Kimi K2.6, MiniMax M3 vs Kimi K2.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Opus 4.7.
Questions
- Which costs less, Kimi K2.6 or Claude Opus 4.6?
- Kimi K2.6 costs less on both: $0.57 in and $2.40 out per million tokens, against $1.80 in and $7.50 out for Claude Opus 4.6.
- 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-k2.6 to claude-opus-4-6 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 K2.6 the better pick?
- Better depends on the job; this page compares what the catalog can measure. Kimi K2.6 costs less on both: $0.57 in and $2.40 out per million tokens, against $1.80 in and $7.50 out for Claude Opus 4.6. Kimi K2.6 takes 262,144 tokens of context against 1,000,000 for Claude Opus 4.6. Kimi K2.6 is the newer release. Both run on the same key, so the fair test is your own prompt sent to each model id.