How does sparse routing translate to cost savings?

The full 1T parameters store broad knowledge, but only ~32B activate per token via the expert router. You pay compute proportional to a 32B dense model while drawing on knowledge encoded across the entire trillion-parameter budget.

Why does base K2 list many providers on AI Gateway?

It was the first K2 variant adopted across providers, so routing across Novita AI reflects earlier integration. Later checkpoints and variants can have narrower provider sets.

Yes. Kimi K2 Instruct accepts and produces text. Multimodal capabilities are not part of this release.

What agentic patterns does K2 handle well?

Structured multi-step sequences: invoke an API, parse the response, branch on results, call a second API, and synthesize a final output. The function-calling interface in AI Gateway maps directly to these workflows.

Can I bring my own provider credentials?

Yes. AI Gateway supports Bring Your Own Key for providers where you hold a direct account. BYOK requests are excluded from ZDR coverage.

Moonshot AI

Kimi K2 Instruct

Kimi K2 Instruct is Moonshot AI's Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model with one trillion total parameters and 32 billion active per forward pass, a context window of 131.1K tokens, available through AI Gateway via Novita AI.

View API reference

Input and output price: Input $0.57, Output $2.30, Per 1M tokens
24h uptime: Loading AI Gateway uptime

Get API key Read the docs

import { streamText } from 'ai'

const result = streamText({
  model: 'moonshotai/kimi-k2',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})

Read docs

Overview Playground Providers Uptime Status Throughput Latency API Similar About FAQ

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out Kimi K2 Instruct by Moonshot AI. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

Kimi K2 Instruct

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider

Context	Max Output	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

Novita AI

Legal:Terms•Privacy

131K

1.2 s

40 tps

$0.57/M

$2.30/M

—

07/11/2025

Getting started

Call Kimi K2 Instruct through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'moonshotai/kimi-k2',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same Kimi K2 Instruct request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'moonshotai/kimi-k2',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
    temperature: 0.5,
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`model`	`string`	Yes	Model ID in the form `creator/model`, e.g. `moonshotai/kimi-k2`. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
`maxOutputTokens`	`number`	No	Hard cap on generated tokens. Kimi K2 Instruct supports up to `131,072` output tokens.
`providerOptions`	`Record<string, JSONValue>`	No	AI Gateway routing options under `gateway`, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

Input	Formats	Sources	Max count	Max size	Limits
Text	—	—	—	—	Prompt and response share the 131K-token context window

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK moonshotai provider docs.

provider-options.ts

import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'moonshotai/kimi-k2',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['novita'],
      },
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`providerOptions.gateway.only`	`string[]`	No	Restrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
`providerOptions.gateway.order`	`string[]`	No	Preferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
`providerOptions.gateway.sort`	`'cost' \| 'ttft' \| 'tps'`	No	Rank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
`providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetention`	`boolean`	No	Route only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts

import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';

async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'moonshotai/kimi-k2',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });

  console.log(result.text);
}

main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by Moonshot AI

Model

Context	Latency	Throughput	Input	Output	Cache	Web Search	Capabilities	Providers	ZDR	No Training	Free Tier	Release Date

moonshotai/kimi-k3-fast

1.6 s

122 tps

$4.50/M

$22.50/M

Read$0.45/M

—

07/27/2026

moonshotai/kimi-k3

0.6 s

163 tps

$2.50/M+1 more

$12.75/M+1 more

Read$0.29/M

—

+11

07/16/2026

moonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code-highspeed

262K

2.1 s

181 tps

$1.90/M

$8/M

Read$0.38/M

—

06/15/2026

moonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code

262K

0.8 s

90 tps

$0.74/M+1 more

$3.50/M+1 more

Read$0.15/M

—

06/12/2026

moonshotai/kimi-k2.6

262K

0.4 s

131 tps

$0.95/M

$4/M

Read$0.16/M

—

04/20/2026

moonshotai/kimi-k2.5

262K

0.7 s

52 tps

$0.60/M

$3/M

Read$0.10/M

—

01/26/2026

Copy link to headingAbout Kimi K2 Instruct

Kimi K2 Instruct, released July 11, 2025, is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model from Moonshot AI.

Sparse expert routing at 32B activation. The full trillion parameters encode broad knowledge: programming languages, API conventions, domain facts, and tool-use patterns. At inference time, a routing mechanism selects roughly 32 billion parameters per token. Latency and compute cost stay comparable to a dense 32B model, while the knowledge base spans the entire trillion-parameter budget.

With 32B active parameters for reasoning depth and a full 1T parameter budget encoding broad tool-use and coding knowledge, K2 handles structured sequences of API calls, multi-step planning, and code synthesis.

Kimi K2 Instruct is available through AI Gateway at $0.57 per million input tokens and $2.3 per million output tokens.

AI Gateway routes K2 across Novita AI, giving you automatic failover across multiple providers.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Configuration: K2 routes across Novita AI. Choose it when uptime and provider redundancy matter most.
Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Kimi K2 Instruct

Best for

Agentic pipelines: Structured sequences of API calls, data processing, and code synthesis
Provider redundancy: Deployments where failover across multiple providers matters most
K2 architecture baseline: Teams evaluating the K2 architecture for the first time who want the original release
Broad knowledge at low cost: Workloads that benefit from trillion-parameter knowledge breadth at 32B-dense inference economics

Consider alternatives when

Chain-of-thought traces: Kimi K2 Thinking layers extended reasoning on top of this foundation
Minimum latency: Kimi K2 Turbo is the speed-optimized variant
September 2025 checkpoint: Use Kimi K2-0905 for expanded context and refined agentic training
Multimodal inputs: K2 processes text only, so reach for a vision-capable model

Copy link to headingConclusion

Kimi K2 Instruct established that sparse expert routing can deliver dense-model responsiveness at trillion-parameter scale. Its architecture anchors the entire K2 family of specialized variants. Routing across Novita AI gives you automatic failover for high-availability production.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

How does sparse routing translate to cost savings?
The full 1T parameters store broad knowledge, but only ~32B activate per token via the expert router. You pay compute proportional to a 32B dense model while drawing on knowledge encoded across the entire trillion-parameter budget.
Why does base K2 list many providers on AI Gateway?
It was the first K2 variant adopted across providers, so routing across Novita AI reflects earlier integration. Later checkpoints and variants can have narrower provider sets.
Is K2 text-only?
Yes. Kimi K2 Instruct accepts and produces text. Multimodal capabilities are not part of this release.
What agentic patterns does K2 handle well?
Structured multi-step sequences: invoke an API, parse the response, branch on results, call a second API, and synthesize a final output. The function-calling interface in AI Gateway maps directly to these workflows.
Can I bring my own provider credentials?
Yes. AI Gateway supports Bring Your Own Key for providers where you hold a direct account. BYOK requests are excluded from ZDR coverage.

Your use is subject to Moonshot AI's Terms & Privacy Policies.

Agent Stack

Core Platform

Tools

Learn

Build

Explore

Kimi K2 Instruct

Copy link to headingPlayground

Copy link to headingProviders

Copy link to headingUptime24 hours

Copy link to headingThroughput24 hours

Copy link to headingLatency24 hours

Getting started

Top-level parameters

Input limits

Provider options

Routing across providers

Tool calling

Copy link to headingMore models by Moonshot AI

Copy link to headingAbout Kimi K2 Instruct

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Kimi K2 Instruct

Best for

Consider alternatives when

Copy link to headingConclusion

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions