Claude Opus 5 (High) vs MiniMax-M3
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 5 (High) 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 (High) scores 18.9 points higher (48.1 vs 29.2) but costs 8.1× as much to run the benchmark ($4332 vs $538; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 5 (High) when you need intelligence above 29.2, and MiniMax-M3 when 29.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 5 (High) | MiniMax-M3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 48.1 | 29.2 | −39.3% MiniMax-M3 is 39.3% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,331.68 | $537.98 | −87.6% MiniMax-M3 is 87.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 23.65s | 25.47s | +7.7% MiniMax-M3 is 7.7% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
MiniMax-M3 vs Claude Opus 5 (High): 39.3% less intelligence, 87.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 7.7% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 5 (High) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- 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 (High)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-high/minimax-m3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-5-high/minimax-m3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill