How to Get Free Kimi K2.5 API Credits via NVIDIA NIM

TL;DR: NVIDIA gives developers 1,000 free credits to test AI models through their NIM platform. Kimi K2.5 is one of them — a 1T parameter multimodal model that rivals Claude and GPT on coding benchmarks. Sign up at build.nvidia.com, grab an API key, and start building.

What is Kimi K2.5?

Kimi K2.5 is a native multimodal agentic model from Moonshot AI, built on top of Kimi K2 and trained on ~15 trillion mixed visual and text tokens.

Key Specs

• 1 trillion total parameters (32B activated per request)
• 256K context length (double K2's 128K)
• Native vision understanding (MoonViT encoder, 400M params)
• Agent Swarm — decomposes tasks into parallel sub-agents
• Thinking mode for complex reasoning
• 76.8% on SWE-Bench Verified (competitive with GPT-5.2 and Claude 4.5 Opus)

K2.5 excels at coding from visual inputs (UI designs, video workflows) and complex multi-step agentic tasks.

Step-by-Step: Get Free NVIDIA NIM Credits

1. Visit the NVIDIA API Catalog

Go to build.nvidia.com and find the Kimi K2.5 model.

2. Create an NVIDIA Developer Account

Click "Get API Key" in the right panel. Sign up with your email to join the NVIDIA Developer Program (free).

3. Copy Your API Key

Once signed up, you'll receive an API key. Copy it somewhere safe.

4. Start Using the API

The API is OpenAI-compatible, so you can use standard SDKs:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1",
    api_key="YOUR_NVIDIA_API_KEY"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="moonshotai/kimi-k2.5-instruct",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Write a Python function to merge two sorted arrays."}
    ],
    temperature=1.0,
    top_p=0.95,
    max_tokens=4096
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Recommended settings: temperature=1.0, top_p=0.95 (per Moonshot's guidance)

How Many Free Credits Do You Get?

NVIDIA provides 1,000 free credits to new developer accounts for testing models in their API catalog. This is enough for significant experimentation with K2.5 before committing to paid usage.

K2.5 vs K2: What's the Difference?

Why Use NVIDIA NIM Instead of Moonshot Directly?

• Free credits — perfect for testing before committing
• Enterprise-grade infrastructure — hosted on NVIDIA DGX Cloud
• Familiar API format — OpenAI-compatible, works with existing tooling
• No China firewall issues — NVIDIA hosts are globally accessible

Alternative: Use Kimi K2.5 on lobsterfarm.ai

Want to run Kimi K2.5 with a full AI assistant setup — including Telegram integration, web browsing, and agentic tools — without managing any infrastructure?

lobsterfarm.ai lets you deploy a personal AI agent powered by your choice of models (Claude, GPT, Gemini, or Kimi) with:

• ✅ One-click setup
• ✅ Telegram bot included
• ✅ Web search & browsing built-in
• ✅ Gmail integration (no Google Workspace needed)
• ✅ Credit-based billing (pay for what you use)

Get started →