If you only read one line: pick by workload, not by benchmark charts.
For Reading long reports and papers; Organizing Chinese source material, Kimi is the more direct fit. For Chinese office documents and tables; Teams already running on Alibaba Cloud, Qwen gets there with less fighting.
Both have free tiers, so cost only separates them once you hit the limits. Kimi takes more text in one go (1,048,576 tokens (K3 series); 262,144 tokens on the K2 series (checked 2026-10-29) vs 1,000,000 tokens (qwen3.8-max; 991,808 max input, 131,072 max output) (checked 2026-10-29)), which matters for whole books, long contracts and big codebases.
| Dimension | Kimi | Qwen |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | Membership annual plans work out to CNY 39 / 79 / 159 / 559 / 1,119 per month, alongside a free tier; API K3.1 Pro CNY 13 input and CNY 68 output per million tokens (CNY 1.3 on cache hits) (checked 2026-10-29) | Qianwen app free; API qwen3.8-max CNY 12 input and CNY 36 output per million tokens (Beijing region; CNY 1.5 on cache hits) (checked 2026-10-29) |
| Context window | 1,048,576 tokens (K3 series); 262,144 tokens on the K2 series (checked 2026-10-29) | 1,000,000 tokens (qwen3.8-max; 991,808 max input, 131,072 max output) (checked 2026-10-29) |
| Platforms | Web, iOS, Android | Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, HarmonyOS PC |
| Best for | Reading long reports and papers; Organizing Chinese source material; Light agent and research tasks | Chinese office documents and tables; Teams already running on Alibaba Cloud; Developers calling a China-hosted model |
| Availability | Directly reachable in mainland China with no proxy, and platform.kimi.com serves the China region (checked 2026-10-29). | Directly reachable in mainland China with no proxy, and a China edition exists (checked 2026-10-29). |
Reading long reports and papers; Organizing Chinese source material; Light agent and research tasks. Its strongest point: Swallows a whole book and answers against the full text. Watch out for: Concurrency limits bite at Chinese peak times.
Chinese office documents and tables; Teams already running on Alibaba Cloud; Developers calling a China-hosted model. Its strongest point: Balances Chinese and English quality on the same model. Watch out for: Web and app do not offer the same features.
Most people I know keep both tabs open — one for finding things, one for producing the final draft — and stop paying for whichever they touch last.
Kimi if you want Reading long reports and papers. Qwen if Chinese office documents and tables. Neither has a learning curve worth worrying about past the first day.
Yes — both have free tiers, and the pair covers more ground than either alone.
Kimi takes more text in one go (1,048,576 tokens (K3 series); 262,144 tokens on the K2 series (checked 2026-10-29) vs 1,000,000 tokens (qwen3.8-max; 991,808 max input, 131,072 max output) (checked 2026-10-29)), which matters for whole books, long contracts and big codebases.