# Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite vs Kimi K3

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is the cheaper of the 2: for the same tokens, 3 read for each 1 written, Kimi K3 costs 7.1 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/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-kimi-k3
- Makers: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite from Google, Kimi K3 from Moonshot AI

## Price per million tokens, in US dollars

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Kimi K3 |
| --- | --: | --: |
| Input | $0.30 | $3 |
| Cached input | $0.03 | $0.30 |
| Cache write | not listed | $3 |
| Output | $2.50 | $15 |
| Blend, 3 read for each 1 written | $0.85 | $6 |
| Batch input | not listed | not listed |
| Batch output | not listed | not listed |
| Context window, tokens | 1.05M | 1.05M |
| Capability score (Epoch Capabilities Index; GPT-5 is 150) | 145 | 157 |
| Longest answer, tokens | 66K | 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:

- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: about 2,200 tokens. Google does not publish the Gemini tokenizer. Its rule is that a token is about 4 characters, so the count is the characters divided by 4.
- 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 | Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Kimi K3 |
| --- | --- | --: | --: |
| A chat question | 300, 500, 100 | $4.02 | $25.20 |
| A hard question, with thinking | 300, 1,400, 100 | $10.77 | $65.70 |
| A long report, summarised | 60,000, 2,000, 20 | $13.80 | $126 |
| A 40-turn agent task | 2,800,000, 40,000, 10 | $77.88 | $659 |
| A support bot's reply | 4,000, 300, 2,000 | $84.60 | $666 |
| Sort a message into a category | 250, 5, 50,000 | $131 | $1,238 |
| Read an invoice into fields | 1,500, 250, 1,000 | $32.25 | $248 |
| Review a pull request | 25,000, 4,500, 50 | $28.13 | $214 |

## Questions

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or Kimi K3?

Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper: $0.30 per million tokens read and $2.50 per million written, against $3 and $15 on Kimi K3. On a mix of 3 tokens read for each 1 written, Kimi K3 costs 7.1 times as much.

### Which is better, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or Kimi K3?

On the Epoch Capabilities Index, an independent score from Epoch AI that combines over 50 benchmarks, Kimi K3 scores 157 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 145, above the top of the range of doubt around Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite's score (GPT-5 is 150). One score is an average; test both on your own work before you switch.

### What does a support bot cost a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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 $84.60 a month on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and $666 on Kimi K3: Kimi K3 costs 7.9 times as much for this job.

### What does an AI agent task cost on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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 26 cents on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and $2.20 on Kimi K3. At 10 tasks a day that is $77.88 and $659 a month.

### Which has the larger context window, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite or Kimi K3?

Neither: both hold 1.05M tokens at once, about 1,572.9 pages of English text.

### Does the same text take the same number of tokens on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Kimi K3?

No. Our lesson "How AI writes", 1,700 words long, is about 2,200 tokens on Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite 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 Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite and Kimi K3 for work that can wait?

Not with a batch price: neither maker's price page lists one for these models. A cache still lowers the price of text the model reads again.

## Sources

- [Google: API prices](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/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)

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