Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs MiniMax-M3
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) 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.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… scores 22.0 points higher (51.2 vs 29.2) but costs 3.0× as much to run the benchmark ($1627 vs $538; both premium class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallba… when you need intelligence above 29.2, and MiniMax-M3 when 29.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | MiniMax-M3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 51.2 | 29.2 | −43.0% MiniMax-M3 is 43.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,626.81 | $537.98 | −66.9% MiniMax-M3 is 66.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 20.68s | 25.47s | +23.2% MiniMax-M3 is 23.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $4.00 / $20.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
MiniMax-M3 vs Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 43.0% less intelligence, 66.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 23.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) 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 Opus 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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