The closest alternative to Kimi K2 0711 is Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct — comparable intelligence (14.3 vs 14.4); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.570/M; for more speed, Mercury 2 hits 590 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct is the closest alternative to Kimi K2 0711, with an Intelligence Index of 14.3 (Kimi K2 0711 scores 14.4) at $0.080 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.570 for Kimi K2 0711, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Kimi K2 0711 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.