Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax-M2.1

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 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 . 22 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.0

Rank #76 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2.1 MiniMax

38.4

Rank #177 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 22 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax-M2.1 in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 26.9 to 15.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 37.3% for Claude Sonnet 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 $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 205K.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index44.038.4
Released2025-09-292025-12-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M205K
Max output64K131K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.20
Results tracked7322

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.8 (#54), MiniMax-M2.1: 40.1 (#132)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena WebDev13931384
LMArena Coding14891421
ALE-Bench796.15623.83
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
SciCode44.7%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.1 (#30), MiniMax-M2.1: 27.7 (#91)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
Terminal-Bench46.5%36.6%
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%—
Vending-Bench 23,839—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#113), MiniMax-M2.1: 15.8 (#301)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%11.2%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621410
ARC-AGI-213.6%—
SimpleBench54.3%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%—
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-M2.1 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 31.9 (#190), MiniMax-M2.1: 35.6 (#142)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Math14481396
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 (#70), MiniMax-M2.1: 37.7 (#143)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%11.8%
LMArena Expert14831432
GPQA Diamond82.3%—
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%—
SimpleQA Verified30.7%—
MMLU-Pro86.9%—
GPQA (HELM)68.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.1 (#84), MiniMax-M2.1: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.6 (#65), MiniMax-M2.1: 50.2 (#123)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Non-English14251378
LMArena Chinese14591430
LMArena French14591405
LMArena German14271380
LMArena Japanese13901287
LMArena Korean14031297
LMArena Russian14361386
LMArena Spanish14571396

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.2 (#74), MiniMax-M2.1: 74.0 (#108)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Instruction Following14591399
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#45), MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#98)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Longer Query14761416

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.7 (#33), MiniMax-M2.1: 58.5 (#114)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Text14391392
LMArena Creative Writing14421362
LMArena Multi-Turn14651396
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1678—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than MiniMax-M2.1?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 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-M2.1?

MiniMax-M2.1 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-M2.1 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax-M2.1 share?

22 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.

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