Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax-M2

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 37.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.1

Rank #81 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2 MiniMax

37.4

Rank #204 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 66.5 to 53.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 37.3% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 14.8% for MiniMax-M2.
  • MiniMax-M2 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • MiniMax-M2 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 200K.
  • MiniMax-M2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index44.137.4
Released2025-09-292025-10-27
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K205K
Max output64K131K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.20
Results tracked7321

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%61%
LMArena WebDev13931297
LMArena Coding14891370
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
SciCode44.7%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
ALE-Bench796.15—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
Terminal-Bench46.5%30%
Vending-Bench 23,839160.6
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%—
GDPval42.5%—
Remote Labor Index2.1%—
τ²-bench Airline72%—
τ²-bench Banking25.3%—
τ²-bench Retail72.4%—
τ²-bench Telecom84.9%—
Cybench60%—
DeepResearch Bench52.6%—
OSWorld62.9%—
LMArena Search1159—
METR Time Horizons67.4%—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#125), MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%57.8%
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%14.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621357
ARC-AGI-213.6%—
SimpleBench54.3%—
ARC-AGI-163.7%—
CritPt1.1%—
Chess Puzzles12%—
EnigmaEval6%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—
Mystery Game Puzzles17%—
DTBench83.2%—
LMCA38.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84—
ForecastBench61.9—

Math MiniMax-M2 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Math14491352
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%—
ProofBench19%—
Omni-MATH55.3%—
MATH Level 597.7%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)15.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#76), MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Expert14821337
GPQA Diamond82.3%—
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%—
SimpleQA Verified30.7%—
MMLU-Pro86.9%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%—
GPQA (HELM)68.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.8 (#89), MiniMax-M2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Non-English14251313
LMArena Chinese14591366
LMArena French14581335
LMArena German14271355
LMArena Russian14371331
LMArena Spanish14571326
LMArena Japanese1390—
LMArena Korean1403—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Instruction Following14591328
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Longer Query14761331

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Text14391340
LMArena Creative Writing14421286
LMArena Multi-Turn14651361
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1678—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than MiniMax-M2?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 37.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax-M2?

MiniMax-M2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 39.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2 does, with 205K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax-M2 share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.

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