Both models report the same input price at $0.3 per 1M tokens.
API cost decision in 10 seconds
NewMoondream 3 Preview vs LongCat 2.0
Pick LongCat 2.0 when budget and context both matter.
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Data confirmed:
Prices normalized to USD per 1M tokens
Sample workload: 1M input + 500K output
Budget verdict
Pick LongCat 2.0 when budget and context both matter.
On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, LongCat 2.0 is estimated at $0.9 vs $1.55 for Moondream 3 Preview, saving $0.65 (41.9% lower).
Cost-first pickLongCat 2.0
Context-first pickLongCat 2.0
Sample savings$0.6541.9%
10x traffic gap$6.5
LongCat 2.0 is cheaper on the standard workload and also has the larger context window. At 10x that traffic, the same price gap is about $6.5. Use the calculator below to replace the sample workload with your own token volume.
Cost sensitivity
Workload Sensitivity
LongCat 2.0 stays cheaper across input-heavy, balanced, and output-heavy sample workloads.
| Workload shape | Token mix | Better pick | Moondream 3 Preview | LongCat 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input-heavy / RAG | 5M input + 500K output | LongCat 2.0 | $2.75 | $2.1 |
| Balanced workload | 1M input + 1M output | LongCat 2.0 | $2.8 | $1.5 |
| Output-heavy chatbot | 1M input + 5M output | LongCat 2.0 | $12.8 | $6.3 |
LongCat 2.0 is $1.3 cheaper per 1M output tokens (52% lower; 2.08x difference).
LongCat 2.0 has 1.02M more context (32.8x larger).
LongCat 2.0 is $0.65 cheaper on the standard workload (41.9% lower).
Estimate your workload cost
Your Workload Cost
This estimate uses normalized public API pricing per 1M tokens. It is a planning aid, not a billing quote. Verify provider pricing, limits, and terms before production use.
Quick Decision
both models tie on input price; LongCat 2.0 has the lower output price; LongCat 2.0 offers the larger context window. For the 1M input plus 500K output sample, LongCat 2.0 is cheaper for the standard workload.
For a 1M input token plus 500K output token workload, the estimated API cost is $1.55 for Moondream 3 Preview and $0.9 for LongCat 2.0.
Choose Moondream 3 Preview when its provider, model quality, latency, or availability is more important than the numeric price/context winner.
Choose LongCat 2.0 when you care most about lower output-token price, and larger context window.
- On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, LongCat 2.0 is estimated at $0.9 vs $1.55 for Moondream 3 Preview, saving $0.65 (41.9% lower).
- LongCat 2.0 is $0.65 cheaper on the standard workload (41.9% lower).
- Both models report the same input price at $0.3 per 1M tokens.
- LongCat 2.0 is $1.3 cheaper per 1M output tokens (52% lower; 2.08x difference).
- LongCat 2.0 has 1.02M more context (32.8x larger).
| Feature | NewMoondream 3 Preview (Moondream) | LongCat 2.0 (Meituan) |
|---|---|---|
| Input Price prompt tokens per 1M | $0.3 | $0.3 |
| Completion Price per 1M tokens | $2.5 | $1.2 |
| Sample Workload Cost 1M input + 500K output | $1.55 | $0.9 |
| Context Window | 32K | 1.05M |
| Release Date |
Use-Case Decision Matrix
| Use case | Better pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Budget-constrained production | LongCat 2.0 | On the standard 1M input plus 500K output workload, LongCat 2.0 is estimated at $0.9 vs $1.55 for Moondream 3 Preview, saving $0.65 (41.9% lower). |
| High-volume input processing | Tie | Lower prompt-token price matters most when prompts, retrieved passages, or documents dominate the bill. |
| Long responses and chatbots | LongCat 2.0 | Lower output-token price matters most when assistants generate many completion tokens. |
| RAG or long-document work | LongCat 2.0 | A larger context window leaves more room for retrieved passages, conversation history, or source files. |
Related Alternatives
- No lower-cost same-provider swap is currently tracked for this pair.
- Llama 4 Scout offers 1.31M context with $0.47 sample workload cost.
- MiMo-V2.6-Flash offers 1.05M context with $0.28 sample workload cost.
- GPT-6 Luna offers 1.05M context with $0.35 sample workload cost.
- GPT-6 Luna Pro offers 1.05M context with $0.35 sample workload cost.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash · DeepSeek · #1
- Step 5 Preview · StepFun · #2
- GLM 5.3 Flash · Z.ai · #3
- MiMo-V2.6-Flash · Xiaomi · #4
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Open Meituan modelsMoondream 3 Preview is a vision-language model from Moondream with 9B total parameters and 2B active (mixture-of-experts). It handles visual question answering, captioning, OCR, and visual reasoning over images, with...
LongCat 2.0 is a sparse mixture-of-experts language model from Meituan, with 48B active parameters out of 1.6T total. It is suited for coding, repository-level changes, long-horizon problem solving, and agentic...