We keep arriving at the same conclusion in these experiments: you don't need the most expensive model for every step of your workflow. So we tested whether Kilo Code's Auto Model router could act on that better than picking models by hand.
Kilo
@kilocode.ai
Kilo is an open-source all-in-one agentic platform. 3M+ Kilo Coders. 500+ models. No markup.
More ways to control your AI coding spend are live: 📊 Cost Insights: what's driving your cost, broken down by product & user 🔔 Spend Alerts: get notified about unusual usage spikes 💡 Cost Suggestions: inference suggestions based on usage Read more: blog.kilo.ai/more-ways-to-control-ai-coding-spend
Everyone's waiting for a second "DeepSeek moment." We don't think it's coming. Open models like Kimi K3 top the intelligence charts, but serving them made throughput fall off a cliff. The scarce thing was never the model, but the compute to run it. Read more: blog.kilo.ai/p/no-second-...
Kilo Code is now available for JetBrains IDEs as a native Kotlin/Swing plugin built on the IntelliJ Platform. It includes chat, slash commands, file mentions, MCP servers, and model selection. Available now on the JetBrains Marketplace. blog.kilo.ai/p/kilo-code-...
Kilo Code Goes Native on JetBrains
A ground-up rebuild in Kotlin brings first-class AI coding assistance to IntelliJ, WebStorm, PyCharm, and every JetBrains IDE
blog.kilo.ai
The AI race isn't heating up. It's on fire. Pricing changes. Models getting pulled out from under your feet with no warning. And now Palantir's CEO went on CNBC to call the whole thing "effing insane."
Auto Efficient is a next-generation model router inside Kilo. It's session-aware and informed by real benchmark data. On average, it's 77% cheaper than Claude Opus 4.8 while retaining nearly 70% performance parity. Check out the numbers here: kilo.ai/auto-efficie...
10 months ago we predicted AI coding bills would hit $100k/dev/yr. This week Ramp confirmed ~$90k. The fix isn't capping usage or downgrading everyone. It's routing each task to the model that fits it. Kilo's Auto Model does it by default. kilo.codes/0c9ftEx
Auto Model - Kilo Chooses the Right AI Model for Each Task
Auto Model routes coding tasks to the right AI model based on complexity, speed, and cost, reducing manual model switching and helping Kilo Gateway credits go further.
kilo.codes
Stop paying frontier prices to rename a variable! Auto Efficient routes each request to the cheapest model that can handle it, picked on a public benchmark you can check. Easy tasks run lean, hard ones stay reliable. Live now: kilo.codes/0c9ftEx
Augment is sunsetting its JetBrains IDE extensions, w/ ~a month of notice. The alternatives: a CLI or an enterprise platform. Kilo's plugin already covers what PyCharm and IntelliJ devs want: native v7, Apache-2.0, 500+ models, no $100 floor. blog.kilo.ai/p/is-augment-sunsetting-its-ide-extensions
Kilo now shows benchmark data right in the model picker, CLI and VS Code. Each model lists its Terminal Bench completion score and average cost per attempt, measured in Kilo's own harness. GPT-5.5 completes 74.1% of tasks, Kimi K2.6 hits 54.4%. Full table: kilo.ai/leaderboard
Kilo - Best AI Coding Models 2026 | Live AI Leaderboard
Compare the best AI coding models by real Kilo usage, industry benchmarks, pricing, speed, and context window. See live rankings for coding and agent workflows.
kilo.ai
We ran GLM-5.2 and Kimi K2.7 Code through the same test: plan a feature flag service, then build it. GLM's plan scored 9.0 to Kimi's 8.1. But once both built from GLM's plan, the services were near identical. The planner matters more than the builder now. blog.kilo.ai/p/glm-52-vs-...
GLM-5.2 vs Kimi K2.7 Code: Which Model Is Better at Planning vs Building?
We tested both models on the same backend task and found the biggest difference was not in writing code, but in deciding what code should be written.
blog.kilo.ai
Inceptron is live in the Kilo Gateway. Sovereign, EU-hosted inference without giving up model choice. Kimi K2.6, GLM 5.1, MiniMax M2.5. GDPR and ISO 27001 compliant. From $0.15/1M input tokens on MiniMax M2.5. blog.kilo.ai/p/kilo-partn...
Kilo Partners with Inceptron for High-Performance EU Inference
Access fast and secure open-weight models in the Kilo Gateway
blog.kilo.ai
$15 on Opus. $1.70 on the same task with a cheaper model. Most of what an agent does all day doesn't need a frontier model, you're just paying like it does. Here's how to cut your AI bill: blog.kilo.ai/p/4-spend-le...
SpaceX is buying Cursor for $60 billion. SpaceX has the compute, Cursor has the distribution into half the Fortune 500, and the base models are converging. Once a tool gets acquired, its model choices serve the acquirer, not you. blog.kilo.ai/p/spacex-jus...
SpaceX Just Bought Cursor for $60 Billion. Why the Deal Matters.
When a rocket company needs an AI coding tool badly enough to spend $60B, the strategic center has moved from model quality to compute access.
blog.kilo.ai
Fable 5 and Mythos 5 got pulled 3 days after launch over a US export directive. The frontier didn't go with them. GPT-5.5 tops KiloBench, Nemotron 3 Ultra is free and self-hostable, MiniMax M3 runs ~1/40th Fable's cost. The frontier is wider than one lab. blog.kilo.ai/p/you-dont-h...
You Don't Have to Use Fable and Mythos to Work on the Frontier
In a complex regulatory environment, model freedom ensures that your workflows don't stop
blog.kilo.ai
Better than Fable 5, better than Le Chaton Fat, and better than whatever you're switching to tomorrow. Multiple models beats one single model. Every time.
The group chat will no longer be the one telling you your team lost. World Cup ClawByte, one-click install in KiloClaw, daily summaries + get yesterday's scores in your time zone, all piped to Telegram.
ICYMI: Product Week shipped five things this week. All of them, in one place 🧵
Most AI review tools run the same generic rubric on every repo and miss what your team actually cares about. Code Reviews now adapt: drop a REVIEWS.md in your repo and the agent enforces your conventions, not someone's default. Live now.
Two new coding models and a sold-out token plan this week in Kilo. Kimi K2.7 Code from Moonshot, Claude Fable 5 topping our coding benchmarks, and the MiniMax token plans selling out fast enough to need a new batch already.
The Kilo CLI now has a face. Kilo Console is a local, browser-based UI for managing your projects, git worktrees, sessions, and settings. No more hand-editing JSON. Now in beta.
"Open doesn't just mean weights." Chris Alexiuk of NVIDIA on everything the Nemotron family opens up: the data, the recipes, the technical report. The whole point is an open science community around models.
A secret got committed to Git, then "erased" with a branch rewind. The repo looked clean. We ran Grok Build 0.1 on this Terminal-Bench task. It found the orphaned commit, saved the secret, and actually scrubbed the history. 27 steps, 41 seconds, $0.09. Writeup: blog.kilo.ai/p/we-asked-g...
MiniMax M3 benches near Claude Opus 4.8 at a tenth of the price. Coding Plans are live in Kilo. Buy them with the balance you already have, no separate subscription.
On June 1, GitHub Copilot switched to token-based billing. Developers are reporting bills 10x higher, with some burning through a month of credits in hours. Meanwhile, a quieter shift has been underway. There's something for switchers at the end of this thread. 🧵
The dentist appointment you forgot. The standup it knew you'd miss. The Telegram ping to fix it. This is KiloClaw now. 🦞
Hit by the June 1 Copilot billing change? Bring your ChatGPT Plus or Pro subscription into Kilo and run GPT-5.5 at a flat rate, in your IDE or CLI. kilo.ai/use-chatgpt-...
Same prompt, three models, three answers. You keep the one you like. Agent Manager is live in Kilo Code. Every agent runs in its own git worktree, so they work in parallel without touching each other's files.
3 points higher on the benchmark. 8x more expensive to actually run. Guess which one was the right model to ship? Benchmarks tell you who wins. They don't tell you what it costs to win. KiloBench does. blog.kilo.ai/p/kilobench-...
