GLM-5.3 (Low) vs MiniMax-M3

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Low) by Z AI 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

Z AIGLM-5.3 (Low)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 34.30
Total cost: $1013

MiniMaxMiniMax-M3Off the frontier

Intelligence: 29.20
Total cost: $538

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Low) scores 5.1 points higher (34.3 vs 29.2) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($1013 vs $538; both premium class). Pick GLM-5.3 (Low) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise MiniMax-M3.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Low)	MiniMax-M3	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	34.3	29.2	−14.9% MiniMax-M3 is 14.9% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$1,012.50	$537.98	−46.9% MiniMax-M3 is 46.9% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	31.40s	24.85s	−20.9% MiniMax-M3 is 20.9% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$1.40 / $4.40	$0.30 / $1.20
Input modalities	Text	Text, Image, Video

MiniMax-M3 vs GLM-5.3 (Low): 14.9% less intelligence, 46.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 20.9% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker GLM-5.3 (Low): what beats it MiniMax-M3: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.3 (Low) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
MiniMax-M3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.

GLM-5.3 (Low)MiniMax-M3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3-low/minimax-m3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3-low/minimax-m3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill