Moonshot AI vs Particle.AI

Kimi K3 is a large, slow, capable flagship; Particle serves cheap Flash-class models through Vercel AI Gateway. Both offer 1M context at very different prices.

By The Subconscious Team · Updated September 30, 2026

Moonshot AI vs Particle.AI: key differences

Both sides offer 1M context, and that is where the resemblance ends. Moonshot's Kimi K3 is a 2.8 trillion parameter model that always thinks, runs around 33 tokens per second and costs $3 in and $15 out, with cached input at $0.30. Particle.AI serves Flash-class open models through Vercel AI Gateway: GLM 5.3 Flash at $0.10 in and $0.40 out, DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 at $0.14 in and $0.28 out, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.25 in and $1 out with about 157 tokens per second. Cache reads on all three cost $0.03 per million.

The right choice depends on task difficulty. K3 is built for long-horizon coding and document-heavy research, where its near-frontier scores justify the price and the wait. Particle's models suit cheap, high-volume calls and work well as a fallback route inside a multi-provider gateway. Particle is very early, with a tiny catalog and little public track record, and some listings trail faster hosts on latency, such as 3.5 seconds on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. Moonshot saw capacity limits at launch. A router could send easy steps to Particle and hard ones to K3.

What Moonshot AI and Particle.AI 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 K2.6

Full Moonshot AI profile

Particle.AI

Particle AI is an early San Francisco infrastructure startup with a mission to make intelligence as cheap and abundant as electricity. The team works on post-training, inference optimization and distributed systems, all aimed at pushing down cost per unit of intelligence. It is still hiring its founding team and works fully in person. Public detail about funding and founders is thin as of this writing.

Example models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash

Full Particle.AI profile

Should you choose Moonshot AI or Particle.AI?

Moonshot AI

Choose Moonshot AI for

Hard coding and research where capability justifies cost
Visual agent work with native vision
Open flagship weights for later self-hosting

Particle.AI

Choose Particle.AI for

Cheap high-volume calls on Flash-class models
A low-cost fallback inside Vercel AI Gateway
Faster output than K3 on simple steps

Moonshot AI vs Particle.AI at a glance

Attribute	Moonshot AI	Particle.AI
Model access	Open weights, custom license	Open weights
Flagship models	Kimi K3, Kimi K2.6	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash
Speed	~33 tok/s on Kimi K3	~157 tok/s on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
Price	$3 in, $15 out (Kimi K3)	$0.10 in, $0.40 out (GLM 5.3 Flash)
Customization	Open weights to fine-tune	Unknown
Deployment	API, Kimi Code, OpenRouter	Via Vercel AI Gateway
Long context	1M	1M

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Moonshot AI and Particle.AI?

Kimi K3 is a large, slow, capable flagship; Particle serves cheap Flash-class models through Vercel AI Gateway. Both offer 1M context at very different prices.

When should I choose Moonshot AI over Particle.AI?

Hard coding and research where capability justifies cost; Visual agent work with native vision; Open flagship weights for later self-hosting.

When should I choose Particle.AI over Moonshot AI?

Cheap high-volume calls on Flash-class models; A low-cost fallback inside Vercel AI Gateway; Faster output than K3 on simple steps.

Is Moonshot AI or Particle.AI cheaper?

Moonshot AI: $3 in, $15 out (Kimi K3). Particle.AI: $0.10 in, $0.40 out (GLM 5.3 Flash). The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.

Which has more context, Moonshot AI or Particle.AI?

Moonshot AI: 1M. Particle.AI: 1M.

Related comparisons

Running long-horizon agents?

If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious. Our inference stack treats a long-horizon trace as the primary workload, so speed, cost, and accuracy hold up deep into the trace.

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