Whisper Large v3 vs Kimi K3
Benchmarks, API Token Pricing, Context Window & Speed Comparison
Related topics (4)
Compare Whisper Large v3 by OpenAI against Kimi K3 by Moonshot AI across real-world coding, reasoning, token economics, and latency.
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Whisper Large v3
Multilingual ASRThe robust open Whisper checkpoint for multilingual transcription and captioning.
$0.01 / 1M
$0.00 / 1M
448 tokens
36%
Kimi K3
2.8T Open ReasonerMonumental 2.8-trillion parameter open-weights multimodal frontier model featuring 1M context window and toggleable max-effort thinking.
$0.00 / 1M
$0.00 / 1M
1.05M tokens
74.5%
Key Differences at a Glance
- Kimi K3 is 1.0x cheaper for API usage (input + output tokens combined).
- Kimi K3 has a larger context window (1M vs 0K tokens).
- Kimi K3 is faster at 58 tok/s vs 55 tok/s.
- Kimi K3 leads on SWE-bench coding (74.5% vs 36.0%).
| Feature | Whisper Large v3 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
Intelligence Index Composite reasoning & knowledge score (0-100) | 45 | 93 |
Provider | OpenAI | Moonshot AI |
Input Price Cost per million input tokens | $0.01 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Output Price Cost per million output tokens | $0.00 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Blended Price Weighted 7:2:1 cache:input:output per 1M | $0.00 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Context Window Maximum input + output tokens | 448 tokens~1 A4 pages of text | 1.05M tokens~1,573 A4 pages of text |
Max Output Tokens Per single request | 0K | 131K |
Throughput Speed Tokens generated per second | 55 tok/s | 58 tok/s |
SWE-bench Verified Real-world software engineering | 36% | 74.5% |
GPQA Diamond Graduate-level reasoning | 46% | 79% |
Who Wins Where?
At-a-glance decision frameworkEmpirical Head-to-Head Benchmark Scores
Official evaluation metrics verified by independent third-party research labs.
Industry benchmark evaluating real-world GitHub issue resolution and multi-file debugging.
Challenging questions created by domain experts to test complex PhD-level reasoning.
Hardened reasoning and academic knowledge benchmark with reduced lucky-guess probability.
Crowdsourced human preference evaluation based on blind, head-to-head model battles.
Extremely difficult, closed-ended questions spanning the frontier of human expert knowledge.
Autonomous multi-step tasks executed inside a real command-line terminal environment.
Research-grade coding problems drawn from real scientific and numerical workloads.
Contamination-free competitive programming problems collected continuously over time.
American Invitational Mathematics Examination — multi-step Olympiad-level reasoning.
Accuracy when reasoning over very large inputs that fill the model context window.
Tokens emitted per second during active generation streaming.
Latency & Response Time
Time to first token (TTFT) and estimated end-to-end response time for a typical 500-token response.
Real-Time Interactive Token Cost Simulator
Adjust sliders to calculate projected monthly cloud API spending with prompt caching discounts.
Whisper Large v3 · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Supports 99+ languages with strong accuracy
- Open weights for self-hosting and fine-tuning
- Robust on noisy and accented audio
- Very strong on accented and noisy speech
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Not real-time — batch or chunked processing only
- No built-in diarisation or speaker labels
Kimi K3 · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Largest open-weights foundation model in existence (2.8T parameters)
- 1480 LMSYS Chatbot Arena Elo rivaling proprietary closed frontier leaders
- Full 1M token context window paired with massive 131K max output tokens
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Extreme hardware prerequisites (distributed multi-node cluster deployment)
- Generates extensive reasoning traces that demand careful token budget management
Token Use & Task Economics
Estimated cost and token consumption to complete one representative agentic task.
| Metric | Whisper Large v3 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
Cost per Task Estimated USD to finish one task | $0.09 | $2.00 |
Output Tokens / Task Tokens generated per task | 3K | 35K |
Reasoning Tokens / Task Thinking tokens burned per task | 0K | 18K |
Technical Specifications
Architecture, release timeline, capabilities, and modalities.
| Feature | Whisper Large v3 | Kimi K3 |
|---|---|---|
| Official API Model ID (SDK) | whisper-large-v3 | kimi-k3 |
| API Protocol | OpenAI Responses API & Chat Completions v1 | OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI |
| Release Date | 2023-11 | 2026-07 |
| Knowledge Cutoff | 2023 (audio corpus) | March 2026 |
| Architecture | Encoder-decoder speech transformer | Colossus-Scale Multimodal Sparse Mixture-of-Experts |
| Parameters | 1.55B | 2.8T total (MoE) |
| Enterprise Rate Limits (RPM / TPM) | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud |
| Long-Context Tier (>128K/200K) | Flat rate ($0.006/1M in) across full 0K window | Free across full context window (only KV-cache VRAM scales) |
| Prompt Cache Policy & TTL | Automatic prefix caching at $0/1M (no extra cache-write fee) | Automatic prefix KV-caching in vLLM / SGLang (0 cost) |
| Computer Use / GUI Agent | Text-only completion (No GUI action loop) | Supported (Screen coordinate grounding, browser & desktop GUI action loops) |
| MCP & Parallel Tool Calling | Prompt-based JSON extraction only | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema |
| Web Search Grounding & Sandbox | Native Web Search tool + Hosted Code Interpreter & File Search RAG | Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools |
| Official Fine-Tuning Support | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) |
| Multimodal Token Billing | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Audio (~25–32 tokens/sec) | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) |
| Quantization & Min GPU VRAM | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 2 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 4 GB VRAM (Native BF16) | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 1736 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 6020 GB VRAM (Native BF16) |
| Safety & Frontier Classification | OpenAI Preparedness Framework Audited & System Card Published | Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma) |
| Enterprise Compliance (ZDR/HIPAA/SOC2) | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control |
| Input Modalities | audio | text, vision |
| Output Modalities | text | text |
Whisper Large v3 vs Kimi K3: Quick Answers
Which is more intelligent, Whisper Large v3 or Kimi K3?
Kimi K3 is more intelligent. It scores 93 compared with 45 on the composite Intelligence Index.
Which model is faster?
Kimi K3 is faster, generating 58 tokens per second compared with 55 tokens per second.
Which model has lower latency?
Whisper Large v3 has lower latency, with a time to first token of 0.35s compared with 0.72s.
Which model has a larger context window?
Kimi K3 has a larger context window, supporting 1.05M tokens compared with 448 tokens.
Verdict
Choose Whisper Large v3 for batch transcription, subtitling and multilingual captioning, or choose Kimi K3 for national ai research facilities, sovereign enterprise clouds, and frontier stem reasoning.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper: Whisper Large v3 or Kimi K3?+
Whisper Large v3 costs $0.006/1M input and $0/1M output tokens, while Kimi K3 costs $0/1M input and $0/1M output tokens.
Which model has a larger context window: Whisper Large v3 or Kimi K3?+
Whisper Large v3 supports 0K tokens whereas Kimi K3 supports 1.0M tokens.
Understand key metrics like context window, token pricing, reasoning mode, and SWE-bench scores in our comprehensive AI glossary.
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Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.
Sources: OpenAI & Moonshot AI Official Documentation