# Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Kimi K3

Claude Haiku 5.5 is the cheaper of the 2: for the same tokens, 3 read for each 1 written, Kimi K3 costs 30 times as much. Below are both price lists, what 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each, and how many tokens the same text takes on each, which can change the answer.

- Page, with a calculator for your own job: https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-kimi-k3
- Makers: Claude Haiku 5.5 from Anthropic, Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI

## Price per million tokens, in US dollars

| | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Kimi K3 |
| --- | --: | --: |
| Input | $0.10 | $3 |
| Cached input | $0.01 | $0.30 |
| Cache write | $0.125 | $3 |
| Output | $0.50 | $15 |
| Blend, 3 read for each 1 written | $0.20 | $6 |
| Batch input | $0.05 | not listed |
| Batch output | $0.25 | not listed |
| Long prompt input (above 100K on Claude Haiku 5.5) | $0.50 | $3 |
| Long prompt output | $2.50 | $15 |
| Context window, tokens | 1M | 1.05M |
| Capability score (Epoch Capabilities Index; GPT-5 is 150) | 159 | 157 |
| Longest answer, tokens | 128K | not listed |

## The same text, counted by each maker

Our lesson "How AI writes" (https://tecyfy.com/learn/how-ai-works/how-ai-writes), about 1,700 words of English:

- Claude Haiku 5.5: about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens. Anthropic does not publish its tokenizer. It says Claude 4.7 and later produce about 30 percent more tokens for the same text than earlier models, and an independent test counted TypeScript at 1.73 times OpenAI's figure. The range runs from OpenAI's count to 1.75 times it.
- Kimi K3: 2,055 tokens. Counted with the tokenizer Moonshot AI publishes with Kimi K3, the model its API serves.

## What 8 everyday jobs cost a month on each

Each job at its usual runs a day, for 30 days, at the standard price.

| Job | Tokens in, out, runs a day | Claude Haiku 5.5 | Kimi K3 |
| --- | --- | --: | --: |
| A chat question | 300, 500, 100 | 84 cents | $25.20 |
| A hard question, with thinking | 300, 1,400, 100 | $2.19 | $65.70 |
| A long report, summarised | 60,000, 2,000, 20 | $4.20 | $126 |
| A 40-turn agent task | 2,800,000, 40,000, 10 | $21.96 | $659 |
| A support bot's reply | 4,000, 300, 2,000 | $22.20 | $666 |
| Sort a message into a category | 250, 5, 50,000 | $41.25 | $1,238 |
| Read an invoice into fields | 1,500, 250, 1,000 | $8.25 | $248 |
| Review a pull request | 25,000, 4,500, 50 | $7.13 | $214 |

## Questions

### Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Kimi K3?

Claude Haiku 5.5 is cheaper: $0.10 per million tokens read and $0.50 per million written, against $3 and $15 on Kimi K3. On a mix of 3 tokens read for each 1 written, Kimi K3 costs 30 times as much.

### Which is better, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Kimi K3?

They cannot be told apart on the Epoch Capabilities Index, an independent score from Epoch AI that combines over 50 benchmarks: Claude Haiku 5.5 scores 159 and Kimi K3 157, within the range of doubt around each (GPT-5 is 150). So choose on price and on 10 tasks of your own.

### What does a support bot cost a month on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Kimi K3?

At 2,000 replies a day, each reading 4,000 tokens (50 percent of them from cache) and writing 300, it costs $22.20 a month on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $666 on Kimi K3: Kimi K3 costs 30 times as much for this job.

### What does an AI agent task cost on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Kimi K3?

One 40-turn task that reads 2,800,000 tokens in all, 90 percent of them from cache, and writes 40,000, costs 7.3 cents on Claude Haiku 5.5 and $2.20 on Kimi K3. At 10 tasks a day that is $21.96 and $659 a month.

### Which has the larger context window, Claude Haiku 5.5 or Kimi K3?

Kimi K3, with 1.05M tokens against 1M on Claude Haiku 5.5. The window holds your instructions, the files you attach, the conversation so far and the answer, all at once.

### Does the same text take the same number of tokens on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Kimi K3?

No. Our lesson "How AI writes", 1,700 words long, is about 2,100 to 3,600 tokens on Claude Haiku 5.5 and 2,055 on Kimi K3. Each maker cuts text its own way, and every extra token is paid for at the model's price.

### Can I pay less on Claude Haiku 5.5 and Kimi K3 for work that can wait?

On Claude Haiku 5.5 only: with a batch, where you collect the answers later, it costs $0.05 per million tokens read and $0.25 written. Moonshot AI's price page lists no batch price for Kimi K3.

## Sources

- [Anthropic: API prices](https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing)
- [Moonshot AI: API prices](https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat)
- [Epoch Capabilities Index, by Epoch AI (CC BY 4.0)](https://epoch.ai/benchmarks/eci)

## Other comparisons

- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Mythos 5.1](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-mythos-5-1.md)
- [Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Haiku 5.5](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-fable-5-vs-claude-haiku-5-5.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Mythos 5](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-mythos-5.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 5](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-opus-5.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-opus-4-8.md)
- [Claude Haiku 5.5 vs Claude Opus 4.7](https://tecyfy.com/prices/compare/claude-haiku-5-5-vs-claude-opus-4-7.md)