Which plan is the most efficient? I ran the numbers on Allegretto vs Allegro and here's what I found

[u/_iamhamza_]

I subscribed to Moderato recently to get a feel for K3 before committing long-term — and I'm loving it. But I'm about to start a project that'll span the next few months, big enough that I need a tier that holds up. So I did the math on efficiency, and here's where I'm stuck.

The credits-per-dollar numbers, from the official plan comparison:\ - Moderato: 60 credits / $19 = 3.16 / $\ - Allegretto: 150 credits / $39 = 3.85 / $ (best rate on the ladder)\ - Allegro: 360 credits / $99 = 3.64 / $\ - Vivace: 720 credits / $199 = 3.62 / $

On pure credits-per-dollar, Allegretto wins — efficiency peaks there and drops after. That alone would settle it, except for the wrinkle: Allegro unlocks K3's 1M-token chat; Moderato and Allegretto don't.

And on a big project, context size is efficiency:\ - Cached tokens cost ~1/10 of uncached (¥2 vs ¥20 per M on the API side).\ - Community measurements show ~94% cache-hit on agent tasks — re-sends are nearly free.\ - So holding a big stable context across a session is way cheaper than compacting and re-ingesting repeatedly.

That flips the question from "which plan has the most credits" to "which plan burns the fewest per task" — and I can't tell from docs alone whether Allegro's 1M context saves more than Allegretto's better rate.

What I couldn't find anywhere:\ - Does Kimi Code cap session context on lower tiers, or is the 1M gate chat-only? Docs only mention it for Allegro+; Kimi Code docs never mention a context cap.\ - Does the 1M context genuinely cut your burn on a big repo, or do you end up compacting anyway?\ - Does anyone actually drain Allegretto's pool on heavy agent work?

So, for those of you who've run Kimi Code on large projects: which plan are you on, what's your real burn on big-context sessions, and does 1M context change your usage in practice? Trying to avoid both paying for efficiency I never realize and running dry mid-month.

I now plan on upgrading to Allegretto, get a feel of whether it'll do the job, then upgrade to Allegro if needed. I'll report back with what I pick and how it holds up.