Kimi K3: origin, license and EU processing
Kimi K3 is an AI language model from Moonshot AI in China, announced on 16 July 2026. It is the company's current top model: 2.8 trillion parameters, a context window of one million tokens, and it handles text and images in a single model. The weights are public and downloadable, but the license is Moonshot's own and is neither MIT nor Apache.
At lowcloud, Kimi K3 is one of 14 models that run on servers in the EU through Melious AI GmbH. You pick it per message in chat, fix it for one agent, or set it for a single step of a flow. Model choice comes with the free account; without an account you can have a flow built at agent.lowcloud.de, and lowcloud picks the model. What you send to Kimi K3 does not go to Moonshot AI, it goes to a data centre in the EU.
- Vendor
- Moonshot AI, China
- Context window
- 1 Mio. Token
- Reads images
- yes
- Licence
- Kimi-K3-Lizenz
- Processing
- EU servers via Melious
Where Kimi K3 comes from
Kimi K3 is built by Moonshot AI, a company in China. The model was announced on 16 July 2026 and is the company's current top model. Its predecessors are Kimi K2.7 Code and Kimi K2.6, both also available at lowcloud. The weights are published on Hugging Face and can be downloaded. Weights are the numbers a model is made of. Anyone who has them can run the model on their own hardware. Technically, Kimi K3 is an MoE model. MoE stands for Mixture of Experts: the model is split into many sub-networks, and only a small part of them runs for each piece of text. Moonshot states 2.8 trillion parameters in total, of which 104 billion are active per token. Images and video are processed directly by the model, without a separate add-on model. Moonshot publishes its own benchmark numbers for Kimi K3. lowcloud has not checked those numbers and therefore does not repeat them here.
The license is not MIT and not Apache
Many overview sites simply label Kimi K3 "open source". That is not accurate. The model is released under Moonshot AI's own license, the Kimi K3 License. The license permits use, redistribution and modification, and requires the license text to be included. It adds two conditions. First: anyone running the model as a service for third parties whose group revenue exceeds 20 million US dollars over any twelve consecutive months needs a separate agreement with Moonshot AI. Second: anyone operating a product with more than 100 million monthly active users or more than 20 million US dollars in monthly revenue must display "Kimi K3" visibly in the user interface. Purely internal use with no third-party access is exempt, as is use through Moonshot's own products and through certified partners. These conditions do not apply to using the model through lowcloud, because you are not running it yourself. They matter only if you are considering downloading the weights and self-hosting. If a client asks about the license, the correct answer is: open weights, vendor's own license with revenue and user thresholds, not a standard open-source license.
What "on EU servers" means here
The chain is: your client triggers the agent, the agent runs at lowcloud UG in Bielefeld, lowcloud passes the request to Melious AI GmbH in Saarbrücken, and Melious executes it in a data centre in the EU. Nothing goes to Moonshot AI. This works because the weights are published: a European operator can run the model on its own hardware, with no connection to the vendor. What lowcloud does not know, and therefore does not claim: which operator exactly serves Kimi K3. Melious runs no data centres of its own, it distributes across European operators and does not publish which operator handles which model. If your client asks about the specific data centre, the defensible answer is: processing in the EU, operator not disclosed, contract partner is lowcloud.
What Kimi K3 is good for
Long inputs in one piece. The context window is one million tokens. The context window is the amount of text the model can read in one pass. A token is a word fragment of roughly three to four characters. One million tokens corresponds to several thousand pages. A full contract folder, a long email thread or a complete meeting transcript fits into a single step, with no need to split the text beforehand. Images as input. lowcloud tested against the API that Kimi K3 reads images. Screenshots, scanned invoices or photographed forms can go straight into a step. Flows with many consecutive steps where the model should carry over the state from earlier steps. You do not have to run a whole flow on Kimi K3. The model can be set per step, exactly where the long input or the image occurs.
What Kimi K3 is not good for
The model does not accept fixed JSON schemas. A JSON schema specifies exactly which fields an answer must contain. lowcloud tested this against the API: the request is rejected with an error. This is lowcloud's own measurement, not a vendor statement. Moonshot's documentation only describes a general JSON mode without a schema, which is consistent with that observation. In practice: if a step has to return exactly defined fields because a database, a CSV export or another tool works with them afterwards, use a different model for that step. From the EU catalogue, these accept fixed JSON schemas: Kimi K2.6, GLM 5.1, GLM 5, Qwen 3.5 397B and DeepSeek V4 Flash. High-volume work with many short, uniform runs. Kimi K3 sits in the most expensive tier of the EU catalogue. For simple steps that run thousands of times, a cheaper model is the better fit. There is no limitation on image understanding, so you do not need a fallback model for that.
What Kimi K3 costs
There is no figure here. A markup is added to the purchase price, so any number published on this page would be wrong. The relative position: among the 14 models in the EU catalogue, Kimi K3 is in the most expensive tier. To keep costs down, use it for the one step that processes the long input or the image, and use a cheaper model for the rest of the flow. What is actually billed is shown on every single run in the app, in euros. That lets you show a client what a process costs instead of estimating it.
Try Kimi K3
Picking a model needs a free account. You then choose Kimi K3 in the chat, per agent, or per step.
Common questions
Does my data go to China with Kimi K3?
No. The request goes from lowcloud in Bielefeld to Melious AI GmbH in Saarbrücken and from there to a data centre in the EU. Moonshot AI never sees it. This is possible because the model's weights are published and a European operator can run it on its own hardware. What is not disclosed is which operator that is in any given case; Melious does not publish that assignment.
Is Kimi K3 open source?
Anyone can download the weights from Hugging Face, but the license is Moonshot AI's own and not one of the common open licenses such as MIT or Apache 2.0. It includes thresholds at 20 million US dollars in revenue and 100 million monthly active users, above which a separate agreement or a visible "Kimi K3" notice becomes mandatory. So "open source" in the strict sense does not apply, even though many overview sites use the label.
Why does Kimi K3 reject my JSON schema?
Because the provider does not accept fixed JSON schemas; the request comes back with an error. lowcloud tested this against the API itself, and the vendor documentation only describes a JSON mode without a schema. If a step has to return exactly defined fields, use Kimi K2.6, GLM 5.1, GLM 5, Qwen 3.5 397B or DeepSeek V4 Flash for that step.
Can Kimi K3 read images?
Yes. lowcloud tested this against the API. Screenshots, scans and photos can go straight into a step. You do not need a second model just for images.
What does Kimi K3 cost?
We do not state a figure, because a markup is added to the purchase price. Within lowcloud's EU catalogue, Kimi K3 is in the most expensive tier. The actual cost in euros is shown on every run in the app.
Is there a successor to Kimi K3 yet?
Not as of 7 September 2026. Kimi K3 is Moonshot AI's current top model. Its predecessors Kimi K2.7 Code and Kimi K2.6 remain selectable at lowcloud, for example when you need fixed JSON schemas.
Kimi K3 is a product name of Moonshot AI. There is no business relationship between lowcloud and Moonshot AI; we run the openly available model through a European provider. Last updated: 7 September 2026.