Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs MiniMax-M3
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 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 Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… scores 11.6 points higher (40.8 vs 29.2) but costs 1.2× as much to run the benchmark ($622 vs $538; both premium class). Pick Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fall… when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise MiniMax-M3.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) | MiniMax-M3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 40.8 | 29.2 | −28.4% MiniMax-M3 is 28.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $622.28 | $537.98 | −13.5% MiniMax-M3 is 13.5% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.98s | 25.47s | +325.9% MiniMax-M3 is 325.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
MiniMax-M3 vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback): 28.4% less intelligence, 13.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 325.9% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- MiniMax-M3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Medium, Default Fallback)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
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