Kimi Agent Swarm: What's Free, What Needs a Paid Plan, and the Fine Print
Kimi's chat is free and its K3 weights are public. The 300-agent swarm needs a paid plan, from $19 a month. Sign-up, where the swarm lives, a first task, the exact limits and the data terms. Checked against kimi.com and kimi.ai on 2026-10-26.
Kimi is an AI assistant from Moonshot AI, a company based in Beijing. Its current model is Kimi K3.1 Pro. Agent Swarm is a mode where one lead agent splits a big job into pieces and hands them to as many as 300 sub-agents working at the same time. Kimi Work is Kimi's desktop app for Windows and Apple-silicon Macs, with a switch between a single Agent and Agent Swarm. The chat is free. The swarm needs a paid plan, from $19 a month.
What's actually true today
| The claim | Today (checked 2026-10-26) |
|---|---|
| A model "for free" | The weights are open and the chat is free. The K3 weights are on Hugging Face. K3.1 Pro, the model on Kimi's site now, has none yet. Kimi says they come by Nov 4, 2026. At about 3 trillion parameters, you use it through Kimi, not on a laptop. |
| 300+ agents at once | Up to 300 sub-agents, on paid plans. Kimi's Help Center says "up to 300 Subagent instances simultaneously." The Free plan has no Swarm. |
| It runs you $0 | $0 gets you the Free plan: one agent task at a time, no Swarm. Swarm starts at Plus, $19 a month ($15 a month on annual billing). |
| Goes toe to toe with Claude | Kimi's own tests say close. On Terminal-Bench 4.0, Kimi lists K3.1 Pro at 65.7% and Claude Opus 5.5 at 66.4%. Those are Kimi's numbers, not an independent test. |
| Kimi Work does the swarm | Kimi Work is the desktop app, in beta since June 3, 2026. It has an Agent Swarm mode. Swarm also runs on the web and in the phone app. |
1 · Sign up (2 minutes)
1. Outside mainland China, go to kimi.ai and click Log in.
2. Enter a phone number and verification code, or click Continue with Google.
3. Tick the box that agrees to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.kimi.com is the mainland China site, with WeChat and phone sign-in. The two sites have separate terms (section 6).
2 · Find the swarm
Web: kimi.ai/agent. Click "Swarm" next to the + button in the prompt box.
(kimi.com/agent-swarm redirects to the same page.)
Desktop: install Kimi Work, open Work mode, switch from "Agent" to "Agent Swarm".
Phone: open the Kimi app and pick the "K3 Swarm" model above the chat box.The pricing table lists Swarm as not included on the Free plan. We viewed these screens logged out and did not test the switch on a free account.
3 · Run one good first task
A swarm pays off when a job splits into many separate pieces. Kimi's own examples: find the top 3 creators in each of 100 YouTube niches, and collect 200+ Paul Graham essays into folders. Start smaller. Turn Swarm on and paste this in:
I run a [type of business] in [city]. Find 20 competitors. For each one, give me the pricing page link, three services they list, and the most common complaint in their public reviews. Return one table, then a short list of gaps I could fill.
- Expect a wait. Kimi gives 5 to 20 minutes for a single Agent task and says a swarm may take longer. You can leave the page, because the task keeps running in the background. Do not click "Stop output", because that interrupts it.
- Check your credits when it finishes. Click your avatar (lower left), then Settings, then Subscription. The balance shows as a percentage.
Swarm tasks use "roughly several times" the credits of a regular Agent task, so run 20 rows before you run 200.
4 · What's free and what's paid
Every number comes from Kimi's pricing page on 2026-10-26, in USD. Both kimi.ai and kimi.com showed the same prices.
| Free | Plus | Pro | Max | Ultra | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly billing | $0 | $19 | $39 | $99 | $199 |
| Annual billing, per month | n/a | $15 ($180/yr) | $31 ($372/yr) | $79 ($948/yr) | $159 ($1,908/yr) |
| Agent Swarm | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Agent tasks at once | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 |
| Agent credits | not listed | base | 2x | 5x | 10x |
| "Swarm running subtasks" | none | 2 | 4 | 8 | 8 |
- One credit pool. Agent, Deep Research, slides and Kimi Code share it. Credits refresh monthly and do not roll over. Once they run out, new tasks wait for the refresh, an upgrade, or an Extra Usage pack that bills as you go.
- Kimi does not explain the "Swarm running subtasks" line. The page does not say what it counts, and the Help Center says a swarm can use up to 300 sub-agents. We could not tell how the two fit, so test a small job on Plus before you plan a big one.
- Kimi lists no credit amount for the Free plan.
5 · When it's worth paying
- Pay for a recurring job with dozens of similar pieces: lead lists, competitor sweeps, batch summaries.
- Skip it for one question or one document at a time. The Free plan covers that, and Kimi's help page recommends regular chat for simple questions.
- Start on Plus, month to month. Run one real job and read the credit percentage afterward. Annual Plus costs $180 against $228 monthly, but Kimi's terms call payments "final and non-refundable," annual plans included, and you must cancel "at least 24 hours before the applicable renewal date."
- Move up after you hit Plus's credit limit. Pro ($39) adds 2x credits and Goal mode. Max ($99) runs 4 agent tasks at once.
6 · The fine print (read this before you paste anything)
Each site has its own terms. Quotes come from each site's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, fetched 2026-10-26.
kimi.ai (international), documents dated August 13, 2026
- Who you contract with. NOVASCENT PRIVATE LIMITED, "a company registered in Singapore." Singapore law applies and disputes go to arbitration there.
- Your prompts can train the model. You grant Kimi a license to "use Content to train, evaluate, and improve the Services." You can opt out by emailing membership@moonshot.ai. The opt-out looks forward: Kimi "does not require us to delete or remove Content already used in prior training cycles."
- Where your data sits. It "may be transferred to and stored on servers located outside of your country of residence." The policy names no country. Kimi may share data to comply with "lawful requests by public authorities, courts, or regulators."
kimi.com (mainland China), terms effective August 31, 2026
- Who you contract with. Beijing Moonshot Technology Co., Ltd. Chinese law applies, and disputes go to the court where that company is based.
- Where your data sits. "We store your personal information within the territory of the People's Republic of China."
- Training and government requests. Kimi trains on your input and output once it is "strictly de-identified," and you can ask customer service to stop it. Kimi may process data without your consent where the law requires it, with "in response to instructions from government authorities" as one example.
On both sites
- Kimi Work can change your files. The "Fully automatic" permission lets it "directly read and write files, execute code, and modify system configurations." Stay on Default or Manual approval.
- Outputs can be wrong. The terms give no guarantee of accuracy, so check every number before it goes to a client.
- Zero Data Retention is an API feature. Kimi offers it to API customers, not on the chat sites.
Our rule: no client data, passwords or confidential files in Kimi. Use public information. If a client job needs privacy guarantees, get them from Kimi in writing first.
The two-minute version
- Go to kimi.ai (outside mainland China) and log in with a phone number or Google.
- Open kimi.ai/agent and switch on Swarm.
- The Free plan gives one agent task at a time and no Swarm.
- Swarm starts at Plus: $19 a month, or $15 a month on annual billing. Start monthly.
- Use public information. No client data.
Checked 2026-10-26: the pricing pages on kimi.com and kimi.ai, Kimi's Help Center (Agent Swarm, Agent features and limits, Membership plans, Kimi Work), the K3.1 Pro tech blog, and both sites' Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. We did not run a swarm task on a paid plan. Kimi's Agent Swarm help page still names older plan names, so we followed the pricing page. Prices and limits change often, so confirm them before you pay.