MiniMax-M3 vs Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: MiniMax-M3 by MiniMax or Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick MiniMax-M3
Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) vs MiniMax-M3: 37.7% less intelligence, 66.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 93.3% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | MiniMax-M3 | Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.2 | 18.2 | −37.7% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 37.7% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $537.98 | $896.39 | +66.6% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 66.6% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.32s | 47.02s | +93.3% Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reas… is 93.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.38 / $2.25 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image, Video | Text, Image, Video |
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.
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Xhigh) scores 51.00 for $662.
MiniMax-M3Qwen3.6 35B 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/qwen3-6-35b-a3b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/minimax-m3/qwen3-6-35b-a3b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill