Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 5 vs MiniMax-M2.1

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 costs 7.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic

54.5

Rank #26 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2.1 MiniMax

38.4

Rank #177 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher in 9 categories and MiniMax-M2.1 in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 5 leads 48.2 to 15.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 75.1% for Claude Sonnet 5 and 11.2% for MiniMax-M2.1.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $10 for Claude Sonnet 5.
  • Claude Sonnet 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 5MiniMax-M2.1
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index54.538.4
Released2026-06-292025-12-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M205K
Max output128K131K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$10$1.20
Results tracked5122

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.5 (#20), MiniMax-M2.1: 40.1 (#132)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena WebDev15401384
LMArena Coding14831421
ALE-Bench1,463623.83
DeepSWE53.8%—
FrontierCode42.7%—
CursorBench34.1%—
SciCode53.6%—
GSO37.3%—
WeirdML68.8%—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.7 (#16), MiniMax-M2.1: 27.7 (#91)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
Terminal-Bench—36.6%
APEX-Agents54.5%—
GBAEval65.3%—
LMArena Search1194—
Vending-Bench 26,378—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 48.2 (#37), MiniMax-M2.1: 15.8 (#301)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
NYT Connections (extended)75.1%11.2%
LMArena Hard Prompts14611410
SimpleBench60.6%—
CritPt16.9%—
Chess Puzzles35%—
Mystery Game Puzzles35%—
DTBench92.5%—
LMCA50%—
Surface Evolver Bench60%—
Bench to the Future 30.14—
Epoch Capabilities Index156.34—
ForecastBench61.1—

Math Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 66.1 (#21), MiniMax-M2.1: 35.6 (#142)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Math14671396
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)65.6%—
FrontierMath Tier 429.3%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202594.7%—
ProofBench77%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 55.7 (#42), MiniMax-M2.1: 37.7 (#143)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Expert14911432
GPQA Diamond90.5%—
SimpleQA Verified33.7%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate—11.8%

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 5: 42.4 (#26), MiniMax-M2.1: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Vision1275—
Blueprint-Bench 224.9%—
LMArena Document1466—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 54.0 (#55), MiniMax-M2.1: 50.2 (#123)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Non-English14311378
LMArena Chinese14751430
LMArena French14571405
LMArena German14481380
LMArena Japanese14221287
LMArena Korean14111297
LMArena Russian14521386
LMArena Spanish14361396

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 76.6 (#39), MiniMax-M2.1: 74.0 (#108)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Instruction Following14531399

Long Context Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 44.8 (#53), MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#98)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Longer Query14641416

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 5 leads

Claude Sonnet 5: 69.4 (#24), MiniMax-M2.1: 58.5 (#114)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 5MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Text14431392
LMArena Creative Writing14161362
LMArena Multi-Turn14541396
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1794—
EQ-Bench 41236—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 5 better than MiniMax-M2.1?

Claude Sonnet 5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 54.5 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 costs 7.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 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 5 lists at $2 and $10.

Is Claude Sonnet 5 or MiniMax-M2.1 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 55.5 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5 does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 5 and MiniMax-M2.1 share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 5 has 51 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.

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