Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) vs MiniMax-M3
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max) scores 0.9 points higher (30.1 vs 29.2) but costs 9.2× as much to run the benchmark ($4925 vs $538; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) when you need intelligence above 29.2, and MiniMax-M3 when 29.2 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) | MiniMax-M3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.1 | 29.2 | −3.0% MiniMax-M3 is 3.0% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $4,924.80 | $537.98 | −89.1% MiniMax-M3 is 89.1% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 104.36s | 24.85s | −76.2% MiniMax-M3 is 76.2% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
MiniMax-M3 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max): 3.0% less intelligence, 89.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 76.2% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Max) 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 Sonnet 4.6 (Max)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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