MiniMax-M3 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: MiniMax-M3 by MiniMax or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
MiniMax-M3 scores 20.3 points higher (29.2 vs 8.9) but costs 8.4× as much to run the benchmark ($538 vs $63.7; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick MiniMax-M3 when you need intelligence above 8.9, and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoni… when 8.9 is enough.
| Metric | MiniMax-M3 | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.2 | 8.9 | −69.5% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 69.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $537.98 | $63.74 | −88.2% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 88.2% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.11s | 10.29s | −57.3% NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nan… is 57.3% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.05 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Video | Text |
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) vs MiniMax-M3: 69.5% less intelligence, 88.2% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 57.3% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- MiniMax-M3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (High) scores 50.20 for $521.
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 34.50 for $56.4.
MiniMax-M3NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/minimax-m3/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/minimax-m3/nvidia-nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b-reasoning?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill