Kimi K3, three months after the hype: too big for almost anyone to run locally, and smaller models have already caught it
K3 came out in July hyped as the best open model you could download, and it scored 57 on Artificial Analysis, right up there with Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5.
Proof1 community thread
Key points
- I went back to see what running it actually looks like now, using Unsloth's quant docs, the model card, AA and the license.
- If your company runs any model-as-a-service business and makes more than $20M in total over any 12 months, you need a separate deal with Moonshot before using K3 commercially, even if K3 itself makes you nothing.
- I couldn't find real task benchmarks for the 1-bit quant, so 79% token agreement is a proxy, not a quality score.
- And if you had 600 GB to play with, would you take 1-bit K3 or something like GLM-5.3 at a much higher quant?
Sources (1)
- [1]Kimi K3, three months after the hype: too big for almost anyone to run locally, and smaller models have already caught itr/LocalLLaMA (top, daily) · Oct 16, 09:14 PM
K3 came out in July hyped as the best open model you could download, and it scored 57 on Artificial Analysis, right up there with Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5.
I went back to see what running it actually looks like now, using Unsloth's quant docs, the model card, AA and the license.
Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.
Before this
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