Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) vs MiniMax-M3
Which is better for the money: Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) 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.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick MiniMax-M3
MiniMax-M3 vs Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium): 3.9% more intelligence, 55.8% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 196.9% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) | MiniMax-M3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 28.1 | 29.2 | +3.9% MiniMax-M3 is 3.9% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,218.17 | $537.98 | −55.8% MiniMax-M3 is 55.8% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.58s | 25.47s | +196.9% MiniMax-M3 is 196.9% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $2.00 / $10.0 | $0.30 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image, Video |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Sonnet 5 (Medium) 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 Sonnet 5 (Medium)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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