Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs MiniMax-M3.1-Flash

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or MiniMax-M3.1-Flash by MiniMax? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 48.90
Total cost: $3983

MiniMaxMiniMax-M3.1-FlashOff the frontier

Intelligence: 42.70
Total cost: $283

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… scores 6.2 points higher (48.9 vs 42.7) but costs 14× as much to run the benchmark ($3983 vs $283; flagship vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 42.7, and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash when 42.7 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)	MiniMax-M3.1-Flash	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	48.9	42.7	−12.7% MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is 12.7% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,983.28	$283.18	−92.9% MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is 92.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	18.10s	22.73s	+25.6% MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is 25.6% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$0.15 / $0.60
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

MiniMax-M3.1-Flash vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): 12.7% less intelligence, 92.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 25.6% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): what beats it MiniMax-M3.1-Flash: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 46.30 for $207.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)MiniMax-M3.1-FlashToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/minimax-m3-1-flash · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/minimax-m3-1-flash?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill