Moonshot AI (Kimi) free tier: limits and models

What Moonshot AI (Kimi)'s free tier allows

Limits are expressed as concurrency, RPM, TPM and TPD, and the published tier table is keyed to cumulative recharge rather than to a standing free allowance; reaching $5 of cumulative recharge grants a $5 voucher. New accounts start at the lowest tier, so treat the console tier page as authoritative before planning volume.

Published limits: Published per tier
Free access type: Provider free tier
Credit card: Not required
Protocol: OpenAI-compatible at https://api.moonshot.ai/v1
Lifecycle: Active
Sources reviewed: 2026-07-25

Because the tiers key off recharge rather than a free grant, budget for at least a small top-up if you need more than trivial throughput.

Where Moonshot AI (Kimi) sits in this catalog

Moonshot AI (Kimi) is one of 15 provider free tier entries among the 25 providers detailed here. It asks for no credit card, which is true of 23 of the 25. It publishes no fixed request count, as 16 of the 25 do not.

Compared with	Published limits	Card	Endpoint
Moonshot AI (Kimi) (this page)	Published per tier	Not required	`api.moonshot.ai`
Pollinations.AI	Enforced but not published	Not required	`text.pollinations.ai`
Ollama Cloud	Enforced but not published	Not required	`ollama.com`
Google Gemini API	Set by project tier	Not required	`generativelanguage.googleapis.com`

Models Moonshot AI (Kimi) lists as free

kimi-k2-0905-preview — Kimi, also free at 1 other provider here
moonshot-v1-8k — Kimi, also free at 1 other provider here
moonshot-v1-128k — Kimi, also free at 1 other provider here

1 other provider here also host the Kimi family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: Vercel AI Gateway.

Checking a Moonshot AI (Kimi) key

The CORS preflight echoes the requesting origin and allows an Authorization header, so a browser can call this endpoint directly. That was measured against https://api.moonshot.ai on 2026-07-25.

So a key can be checked in the browser checker without installing anything. If you would rather not paste a key into a web page, this does the same thing:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
set -eu

: "${MOONSHOT_API_KEY:?Set MOONSHOT_API_KEY to a key you created yourself at the provider console}"

# Prints the models this key can reach, then the HTTP status on its own line so
# 200, 401, and 429 stay distinguishable.
curl --silent --show-error \
  --write-out '\nHTTP %{http_code}\n' \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $MOONSHOT_API_KEY" \
  'https://api.moonshot.ai/v1/models'

Using a Moonshot AI (Kimi) key

Moonshot AI (Kimi) serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.moonshot.ai/v1. Point any client that accepts a custom base URL at it, and let the client read the key from MOONSHOT_API_KEY so the value never lands in a config file:

# Merge this snippet into ~/.codex/config.toml.
# Project-level config cannot select a custom model provider.
model = "kimi-k2-0905-preview"
model_provider = "moonshot"

[model_providers.moonshot]
name = "Moonshot AI (Kimi) OpenAI-compatible gateway"
base_url = "https://api.moonshot.ai/v1"
env_key = "MOONSHOT_API_KEY"
wire_api = "responses"

Questions about the Moonshot AI (Kimi) free tier

Does Moonshot AI (Kimi) ask for a credit card?

No. Moonshot AI (Kimi) is one of 23 providers here that hand out free access without a card, so the only cost of trying it is the signup.

What are Moonshot AI (Kimi)'s free-tier rate limits?

Moonshot AI (Kimi) publishes no single free-tier number: its limits are published per tier. This catalog leaves that blank rather than guessing a figure.

What happens when a Moonshot AI (Kimi) key hits the limit?

The endpoint answers 429. That is a statement about the request that was refused, not about how much quota is left; only a reset header from the provider tells you when it clears.

Is the Moonshot AI (Kimi) free tier going away?

Nothing in Moonshot AI (Kimi)'s own documentation says so as of 2026-07-25. Because the tiers key off recharge rather than a free grant, budget for at least a small top-up if you need more than trivial throughput.

Can Moonshot AI (Kimi) be used with Codex, Cline, or Continue?

Yes. Moonshot AI (Kimi) serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.moonshot.ai/v1, so any client that accepts a custom base URL can use it. Claude Code is the exception, because it speaks the Anthropic protocol instead.

Official sources

Kimi rate limitshttps://platform.moonshot.ai/docs/pricing/limits
Kimi API overviewhttps://platform.moonshot.ai/docs/introduction
Kimi pricinghttps://platform.moonshot.ai/docs/pricing/chat

Every figure above was read from those pages on 2026-07-25. Where a provider states a limit only inside a console, this catalog records that fact instead of a number. See the methodology for how an entry gets in and how it gets corrected.