Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs MiniMax-M2

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 37.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Anthropic

50.3

Rank #50 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2 MiniMax

37.4

Rank #204 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 19.4.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 80.9% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 4.6.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.6 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 205K.
  • MiniMax-M2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index50.337.4
Released2026-02-172025-10-27
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M205K
Max output128K131K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.20
Results tracked5721

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67), MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena WebDev15221297
LMArena Coding15041370
SWE-bench Verified75.2%—
DeepSWE29.9%—
FrontierCode24.3%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)—61%
SciCode46.8%—
WeirdML66.1%—
ALE-Bench1,327—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28), MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
Terminal-Bench53.4%30%
Vending-Bench 27,204160.6
APEX-Agents43%—
OSWorld 2.09.3%—
DeepResearch Bench54.9%—
OSWorld72.1%—
ExploitBench23.6%—
GBAEval48.8%—
GDP.pdf18%—
LMArena Search1221—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45), MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
NYT Connections (extended)80.9%14.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts14841357
ARC-AGI-260.4%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark—57.8%
ARC-AGI-186.5%—
CritPt3.1%—
Chess Puzzles13%—
Thematic Generalization76.3%—
Mystery Game Puzzles16%—
DTBench89.9%—
LMCA46.5%—
Epoch Capabilities Index152.24—
ForecastBench62—

Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49), MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Math14621352
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202585.8%—
ProofBench45%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)8.3%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65), MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Expert15001337
GPQA Diamond87.4%—
SimpleQA Verified35.5%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate10.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68), MiniMax-M2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Vision1283—
Blueprint-Bench 26.7%—
LMArena Document1482—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41), MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Non-English14401313
LMArena Chinese14911366
LMArena French14651335
LMArena German14281355
LMArena Russian14401331
LMArena Spanish14641326
LMArena Japanese1420—
LMArena Korean1411—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25), MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Instruction Following14751328

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44), MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Longer Query14791331

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22), MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.6MiniMax-M2
LMArena Text14581340
LMArena Creative Writing14351286
LMArena Multi-Turn14641361
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1810—
EQ-Bench 41207—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than MiniMax-M2?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 37.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 39.3 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and MiniMax-M2 share?

19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.

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