GLM-5.3 (Max) vs MiniMax-M3

Which is better for the money: GLM-5.3 (Max) 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 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 44.80
Total cost: $2503

MiniMaxMiniMax-M3Off the frontier

Intelligence: 29.20
Total cost: $538

Verdict

Depends on your budget

GLM-5.3 (Max) scores 15.6 points higher (44.8 vs 29.2) but costs 4.7× as much to run the benchmark ($2503 vs $538; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick GLM-5.3 (Max) when you need intelligence above 29.2, and MiniMax-M3 when 29.2 is enough.

Metric	GLM-5.3 (Max)	MiniMax-M3	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	44.8	29.2	−34.8% MiniMax-M3 is 34.8% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$2,503.48	$537.98	−78.5% MiniMax-M3 is 78.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	31.62s	25.47s	−19.4% MiniMax-M3 is 19.4% 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 (Max): 34.8% less intelligence, 78.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 19.4% faster end-to-end.

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

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

GLM-5.3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
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 (Max)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/minimax-m3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/glm-5-3/minimax-m3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill