Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs MiniMax-M3
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or MiniMax-M3 by MiniMax? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick MiniMax-M3
MiniMax-M3 vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 41.1% more intelligence, 64.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 17.0% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | MiniMax-M3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 29.2 | +41.1% MiniMax-M3 is 41.1% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $537.98 | −64.2% MiniMax-M3 is 64.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 25.25s | +17.0% MiniMax-M3 is 17.0% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- MiniMax-M3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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