As of August 30, 2026, Laguna S 2.1 is 90% cheaper per million tokens than Kimi K2 Base. Kimi K2 Base is $0.57 / $2.30 per million input/output tokens versus Laguna S 2.1 at $0.10 / $0.20. Sources: https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k2 and https://poolside.ai
Sources: OpenRouter pricing (https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k2); Poolside pricing (https://poolside.ai)
Kimi K2 Base
Moonshot AI
Input
$0.57
Output
$2.30
Laguna S 2.1
Poolside
Input
$0.10
Output
$0.20
Token pricing, specs, and benchmarks side by side
Kimi K2 BaseLaguna S 2.1Verdict
Both models are closely matched on benchmarks. Laguna S 2.1 has the pricing advantage, making it the better value unless Kimi K2 Base's specific capabilities are critical to your workflow.
As of August 30, 2026, Laguna S 2.1 is 90% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Laguna S 2.1 costs $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens ($0.30 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). Kimi K2 Base costs $0.57 / $2.30 per million tokens ($2.87 blended). Sources: https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k2 and https://poolside.ai. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.
Kimi K2 Base OpenRouter API pricing is $0.57 input and $2.30 output per million tokens via OpenRouter. Laguna S 2.1 Poolside API pricing is $0.10 input and $0.20 output per million tokens via Poolside. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.
Laguna S 2.1 has a published SWE-bench Pro score of 59.4%. Kimi K2 Base does not have that eval on this page yet.
Kimi K2 Base supports a 131K token context window, while Laguna S 2.1 supports 1M tokens. Laguna S 2.1 offers a larger context window. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.
Shared benchmark scores for Kimi K2 Base and Laguna S 2.1 are still limited. Check the comparison table for the evals each model has published. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.
Both Kimi K2 Base and Laguna S 2.1 are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Laguna S 2.1 has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.
Yes. Call Kimi K2 Base through OpenRouter and Laguna S 2.1 through Poolside with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.
List rates are the latest published OpenRouter API pricing and Poolside API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k2 and https://poolside.ai. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.
Kimi K2 Base supports up to an unspecified number of output tokens per request, while Laguna S 2.1 supports up to an unspecified number of output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.
Neither Kimi K2 Base nor Laguna S 2.1 has published throughput data on this page yet. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.
Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Kimi K2 Base or Laguna S 2.1 from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.
This comparison covers API pricing, context window, throughput, and benchmark scores. Kimi K2 Base costs $0.57/M input and $2.30/M output via OpenRouter. Laguna S 2.1 costs $0.10/M input and $0.20/M output.
Rank both on the LLM leaderboard, SWE-bench, and Humanity's Last Exam.
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