Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs MiniMax-M3
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M3 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 . 39 shared benchmarks.
MiniMaxSummary
- They share 39 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax-M3 in 2 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 29.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GBAEval: 48.8% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 0.9% for MiniMax-M3.
- MiniMax-M3 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- MiniMax-M3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 50.1 | 43.5 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2026-06-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 512K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 41 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), MiniMax-M3: 41.5 (#111)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | 14.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1521 | 1482 |
| SciCode | 46.8% | 47.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1470 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | 640.02 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), MiniMax-M3: 22.5 (#121)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 43% | 37.7% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | 4.6% |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | 0.9% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | 2,158 |
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#40), MiniMax-M3: 29.3 (#83)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | 65.1% |
| CritPt | 3.1% | 3.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | 14% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | 1447 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | 8% |
| DTBench | 89.9% | 78.9% |
| LMCA | 46.5% | 33.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.25 | 147 |
| ForecastBench | 62 | 61.4 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| SimpleBench | — | 45.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 55% |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), MiniMax-M3: 39.1 (#83)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | 71.1% |
| ProofBench | 45% | 18% |
| LMArena Math | 1463 | 1432 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge MiniMax-M3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.6 (#60), MiniMax-M3: 58.4 (#32)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | 90.9% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1462 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |
Multimodal MiniMax-M3 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), MiniMax-M3: 39.5 (#45)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | 1254 |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | 1435 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), MiniMax-M3: 53.2 (#70)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1420 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1465 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1445 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1424 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1419 | 1381 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1372 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1430 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1465 | 1431 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), MiniMax-M3: 75.7 (#56)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1433 |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), MiniMax-M3: 44.2 (#68)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1445 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), MiniMax-M3: 62.3 (#79)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1433 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1405 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | 1150 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1441 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than MiniMax-M3?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M3 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-M3?
MiniMax-M3 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-M3 better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.0 versus 41.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 1M tokens.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and MiniMax-M3 share?
39 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M3 has 41.