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Moonshot AI vs Dolphin
Moonshot sells near-frontier quality with Kimi K3. Dolphin sells very low prices on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash over a decentralized network.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Moonshot AI vs Dolphin: key differences
Kimi K3 is an open-weight model with 1M context and a 93.4% SWE-bench Verified score from Vals AI, priced at $3 in and $15 out and running around 33 tokens per second. Demand outran Moonshot's GPUs after launch, and new API subscriptions paused for a time. Dolphin's API launched in October 2026 with one model, DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, at $0.01 in and $0.07 out per million tokens, served on idle consumer GPUs, with no published speed, context or SLA.
Moonshot fits hard coding and long-document work where quality comes first. Dolphin fits cheap background calls and uncensored models, where tail latency matters little.
What Moonshot AI and Dolphin do
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.
Example models: Kimi K3, Kimi K2.8 Preview
Full Moonshot AI profile
Dolphin
Dolphin began in 2023 as Eric Hartford's series of open-source, uncensored fine-tunes, trained to drop the refusals and baked-in guidelines of their base models so that the developer sets the rules through the system prompt. Current releases include Dolphin Llama 3.1 8B and Dolphin Mistral 24B Venice Edition, built with Venice, and the project publishes nearly 100 models on Hugging Face. It also runs a chat app, a Telegram bot and a synthetic data service that generates answers to commonly refused prompts.
Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B
Full Dolphin profileShould you choose Moonshot AI or Dolphin?
Moonshot AI
Choose Moonshot AI for
- Near-frontier coding on open weights
- 1M context for repo-scale agents
- Cache discounts on long prompts
Dolphin
Choose Dolphin for
- Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls
- Uncensored models
- Requests nodes cannot log
Moonshot AI vs Dolphin at a glance
| Attribute | Moonshot AI |  Dolphin |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, custom license | Open weights, uncensored fine-tunes |
| Flagship models | Kimi K3, Kimi K2.8 Preview | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Dolphin Mistral 24B |
| Speed | ~33 tok/s on Kimi K3 | Unknown |
| Price | $3 in, $15 out (Kimi K3) | $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash) |
| Customization | Open weights to fine-tune | Own uncensored fine-tunes |
| Deployment | API, Kimi Code, OpenRouter | Decentralized serverless API |
| Long context | 1M | Unknown |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Moonshot AI and Dolphin?
Moonshot sells near-frontier quality with Kimi K3. Dolphin sells very low prices on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash over a decentralized network.
When should I choose Moonshot AI over Dolphin?
Near-frontier coding on open weights; 1M context for repo-scale agents; Cache discounts on long prompts.
When should I choose Dolphin over Moonshot AI?
Very cheap DeepSeek V4.1 Flash calls; Uncensored models; Requests nodes cannot log.
Is Moonshot AI or Dolphin cheaper?
Moonshot AI: $3 in, $15 out (Kimi K3). Dolphin: $0.01 in, $0.07 out (DeepSeek V4.1 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
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