Model comparison
Claude Opus 4.5 vs MiniMax-M2.1
Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 22 shared benchmarks.
MiniMaxSummary
- They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher in 9 categories and MiniMax-M2.1 in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.5 leads 42.5 to 15.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 52.5% for Claude Opus 4.5 and 11.2% for MiniMax-M2.1.
- MiniMax-M2.1 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.5.
- MiniMax-M2.1 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 200K.
- MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 50.5 | 38.4 |
| Released | 2025-11-01 | 2025-12-23 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 200K | 205K |
| Max output | 64K | 131K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $25 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 69 | 22 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 55.4 (#21), MiniMax-M2.1: 40.1 (#132)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1493 | 1384 |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1421 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,025 | 623.83 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 76.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 76.8% | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 70.7% | — |
| GSO | 26.5% | — |
| WeirdML | 63.7% | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.77 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 47.2 (#11), MiniMax-M2.1: 27.7 (#91)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 63.1% | 36.6% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 77.5% | — |
| GDPval | 45.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 3.8% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 84% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 24.7% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 79.6% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 92.3% | — |
| Cybench | 82% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.8% | — |
| OSWorld | 66.3% | — |
| BALROG | 43.5% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1180 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 75% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 4,967 | — |
Reasoning Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 42.5 (#43), MiniMax-M2.1: 15.8 (#301)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 52.5% | 11.2% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1476 | 1410 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 37.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 62% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 80.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 80% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 11.9% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 14.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 22% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 44.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 150.1 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.7 | — |
Math Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 38.5 (#85), MiniMax-M2.1: 35.6 (#142)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1463 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 34.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 4.9% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 86.1% | — |
| ProofBench | 36% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 20.7% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |
Knowledge Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 56.4 (#38), MiniMax-M2.1: 37.7 (#143)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.9% | 11.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1488 | 1432 |
| GPQA Diamond | 86% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 25.2% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 45.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Opus 4.5: 31.1 (#99), MiniMax-M2.1: —
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| GeoBench | 75% | — |
| VPCT | 40% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 28.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1462 | — |
Multilingual Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 54.5 (#45), MiniMax-M2.1: 50.2 (#123)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1438 | 1378 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1470 | 1430 |
| LMArena French | 1471 | 1405 |
| LMArena German | 1449 | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1415 | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | 1424 | 1297 |
| LMArena Russian | 1448 | 1386 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1455 | 1396 |
Instruction Following Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 77.7 (#20), MiniMax-M2.1: 74.0 (#108)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1478 | 1399 |
Long Context Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 46.4 (#21), MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#98)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1480 | 1416 |
| CL-bench | 21.1% | — |
Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4.5 leads
Claude Opus 4.5: 68.2 (#28), MiniMax-M2.1: 58.5 (#114)
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.5 | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1451 | 1392 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1445 | 1362 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1466 | 1396 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1687 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Opus 4.5 better than MiniMax-M2.1?
Claude Opus 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.5 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.5 or MiniMax-M2.1?
MiniMax-M2.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.5 lists at $5 and $25.
Is Claude Opus 4.5 or MiniMax-M2.1 better for coding?
Claude Opus 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.4 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
MiniMax-M2.1 does, with 205K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.5 and MiniMax-M2.1 share?
22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.