# Moonshot AI vs Boundless

> Moonshot makes Kimi K3 and sells it at $3 in, $15 out per million tokens. Boundless serves Kimi K3 at $2.30 in, $11.40 out with the same 1M context.

Canonical: https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/moonshot-ai-vs-boundless · By The Subconscious Team · Updated October 29, 2026

## How they compare

Kimi K3 is Moonshot's 2.8 trillion parameter open model with native vision and a 1M context, scored at 93.4% on SWE-bench Verified by Vals AI. Moonshot's API charges $3 in and $15 out per million tokens with cached input at $0.30, and K3 runs around 33 tokens per second there. It also serves Kimi K2.8 Preview, the default in Kimi Code, and K2.6 at $0.95 in and $4 out. Boundless serves Kimi K3 at $2.30 in and $11.40 out with 1M context, and Vercel measured it at 138 tokens per second on AI Gateway. Its catalog adds DeepSeek, GLM, Qwen and MiniMax models plus resold GPT and Claude.

Moonshot is the pick for Kimi Code in the terminal, access to K2.8 Preview and cheap cached input on long repo prompts. Boundless fits teams that want Kimi K3 at a lower list price with zero data retention and US or Europe processing, through OpenAI or Anthropic SDKs. Its tailored tier can also route requests between model sizes on reserved capacity.

## What each one does

### Moonshot AI

Moonshot AI is the Beijing lab behind the Kimi models. Its flagship Kimi K3 launched July 16, 2026 as a 2.8 trillion parameter mixture-of-experts model that activates 16 of 896 experts per token, with native vision and a 1M token context. It is the first open model in the 3T class, and full weights landed on Hugging Face on July 27. The hosted API costs $3 in and $15 out per million tokens, with cached input at $0.30, and it runs through an OpenAI compatible endpoint, Kimi Code in the terminal, OpenRouter and Cloudflare Workers AI.

### Boundless

Boundless launched in September 2026 as an inference partner for AI-native startups. It sells two things. The Model API serves pre-tuned models on shared capacity, billed per token from prepaid credits with a budget per API key. Tailored inference reserves capacity for one customer, and Boundless engineers pick the model on the customer’s own evals, tune precision, batching, caching, speculative decoding and parallelism, then run the deployment against uptime, throughput and latency targets written into the contract. A free two-week evaluation tests those targets on real traffic against the customer’s current provider first.

## Which is best, and when

### Choose Moonshot AI for

- Kimi Code in the terminal
- Kimi K2.8 Preview
- Cached K3 input at $0.30

### Choose Boundless for

- Cheaper Kimi K3 tokens
- 138 tok/s on K3, per Vercel
- Zero data retention

## At a glance

| Attribute | Moonshot AI | Boundless |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, custom license | Open weights, plus closed GPT and Claude |
| Flagship models | Kimi K3, Kimi K2.8 Preview | GLM-5.3, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Kimi K3 |
| Speed | ~33 tok/s on Kimi K3 | 342 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Vercel) |
| Price | $3 in, $15 out (Kimi K3) | $0.04–$2.30 in, $0.21–$11.40 out per 1M (open) |
| Customization | Open weights to fine-tune | Serving-stack tuning, no fine-tuning |
| Deployment | API, Kimi Code, OpenRouter | Serverless API, reserved tailored capacity |
| Long context | 1M | 1M context on most models |

## FAQ

### What is the difference between Moonshot AI and Boundless?

Moonshot makes Kimi K3 and sells it at $3 in, $15 out per million tokens. Boundless serves Kimi K3 at $2.30 in, $11.40 out with the same 1M context.

### When should I choose Moonshot AI over Boundless?

Kimi Code in the terminal; Kimi K2.8 Preview; Cached K3 input at $0.30.

### When should I choose Boundless over Moonshot AI?

Cheaper Kimi K3 tokens; 138 tok/s on K3, per Vercel; Zero data retention.

### Is Moonshot AI or Boundless cheaper?

Moonshot AI: $3 in, $15 out (Kimi K3). Boundless: $0.04–$2.30 in, $0.21–$11.40 out per 1M (open). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

### Which has more context, Moonshot AI or Boundless?

Moonshot AI: 1M. Boundless: 1M context on most models.

## Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious: [Subconscious vs Moonshot AI](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-moonshot-ai.md), [Subconscious vs Boundless](https://www.subconscious.dev/compare/subconscious-vs-boundless.md).

Full profiles: [Moonshot AI](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/moonshot-ai.md), [Boundless](https://www.subconscious.dev/providers/boundless.md).