MiniMax-M3 vs Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)
Which is better for the money: MiniMax-M3 by MiniMax or Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick MiniMax-M3
Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) vs MiniMax-M3: 5.5% less intelligence, 116.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 127.5% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | MiniMax-M3 | Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 29.2 | 27.6 | −5.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 5.5% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $537.98 | $1,165.00 | +116.6% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 2.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 24.85s | 56.53s | +127.5% Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is 127.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.30 / $1.20 | $0.50 / $3.00 | |
| 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.
- Qwen3.8 27B (Medium) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
MiniMax-M3Qwen3.8 27B (Medium)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/qwen3-8-27b-medium · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/minimax-m3/qwen3-8-27b-medium?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill