Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax-M2.5

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 38.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.5 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 . 31 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.1

Rank #81 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2.5 MiniMax

38.3

Rank #188 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 31 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax-M2.5 in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 66.5 to 53.9.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 37.3% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 16.8% for MiniMax-M2.5.
  • MiniMax-M2.5 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • MiniMax-M2.5 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 200K.
  • MiniMax-M2.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index44.138.3
Released2025-09-292026-02-12
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K205K
Max output64K131K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.20
Results tracked7333

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61), MiniMax-M2.5: 48.1 (#58)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%75.8%
LMArena WebDev13931387
SWE-bench Multilingual67%68.3%
LMArena Coding14891381
ALE-Bench796.15618.17
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SciCode44.7%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32), MiniMax-M2.5: 30.4 (#77)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
Terminal-Bench46.5%42.7%
Vending-Bench 23,839-23.16
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-M2.5: 17.5 (#292)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
ARC-AGI-213.6%4.9%
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%55.2%
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%16.8%
ARC-AGI-163.7%63.7%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621372
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84146.68
SimpleBench54.3%—
CritPt1.1%—
Chess Puzzles12%—
EnigmaEval6%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—
Mystery Game Puzzles17%—
DTBench83.2%—
LMCA38.8%—
ForecastBench61.9—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216), MiniMax-M2.5: 26.9 (#253)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
ProofBench19%4%
LMArena Math14491378
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%—
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-M2.5: 39.2 (#135)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%9.1%
LMArena Expert14821379
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: 34.8 (#89), MiniMax-M2.5: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69), MiniMax-M2.5: 47.1 (#152)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Non-English14251338
LMArena Chinese14591393
LMArena French14581362
LMArena German14271362
LMArena Japanese13901171
LMArena Korean14031232
LMArena Russian14371358
LMArena Spanish14571354

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78), MiniMax-M2.5: 71.5 (#148)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Instruction Following14591353
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46), MiniMax-M2.5: 37.5 (#216)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Longer Query14761366
CL-bench—11.4%
CL-bench Life—6.3%

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34), MiniMax-M2.5: 53.9 (#153)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2.5
LMArena Text14391359
LMArena Creative Writing14421331
EQ-Bench Creative Writing16781361
LMArena Multi-Turn14651364
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than MiniMax-M2.5?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 38.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.5 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-M2.5?

MiniMax-M2.5 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-M2.5 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (47.3 vs 48.1); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2.5 does, with 205K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax-M2.5 share?

31 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.5 has 33.

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