LongCat : API platform for Meituan's open-weight AI models, drop-in with OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs.

Meituan, the Chinese group known for food delivery, open-sourced its LongCat large language models in September 2025; this API platform is how developers run them.

The service mirrors OpenAI and Anthropic request formats, so teams keep their existing SDKs and just change the base URL. One key reaches models from Flash-Chat to the trillion-parameter coding-focused LongCat-2.0. Developers outside mainland China sign up by email; users in China verify identity before buying tokens.

Is LongCat censored on the official platform?

The official longcat.chat website may apply content filters per Chinese regulations. However, the open-source MIT-licensed model weights have no built-in censorship — self-hosted versions operate without restrictions. This is a key distinction from API-only Chinese AI platforms.

How does LongCat compare to GPT-4 or DeepSeek?

LongCat-2.0 packs 1.6T parameters (MoE architecture) with a 1M-token context window. On OpenRouter it ranks top-3 globally(2026-07-01). It's especially strong on agentic tasks. Unlike GPT-4, it's fully open-source. Compared to DeepSeek, it has more parameters and was trained entirely on domestic Chinese hardware.

Can I access LongCat from the United States?

Yes. Both the official website longcat.chat and the open-source model on GitHub are fully accessible from the US without a VPN. No Chinese phone number is needed. The model's MIT license has no geographic restrictions.

Is LongCat open source and free to use?

Yes. LongCat is MIT-licensed and its model weights are publicly available on GitHub. The official chat website longcat.chat also offers free tier access. Developers can self-host the model without restrictions, making it one of the most accessible Chinese LLMs globally.