Model comparison

MiniMax M1 vs Qwen3 235B-A22B

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 40.3 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 18 shared benchmarks.

MiniMax M1

MiniMax

40.3

Rank #150 Confirmed

Qwen3 235B-A22B

Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #91 Confirmed

Summary

They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax M1 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 235B-A22B leads 49.6 to 36.4.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is Fiction.LiveBench: 69.4% for MiniMax M1 and 75% for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
MiniMax M1 is cheaper at $0.55 / $2.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

MiniMax M1 and Qwen3 235B-A22B specifications
	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
Provider	MiniMax	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	40.3	43.5
Released	2025-06-13	2025-04
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	1M	131K
Max output	40K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.55	$0.70
Output $ / M tokens	$2.20	$2.80
Results tracked	18	49

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 39.9 (#153), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Coding	1359	1445
Aider Polyglot	—	59.6%
SciCode	—	42.4%
WeirdML	—	41%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

MiniMax M1: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	52.1%
Vending-Bench 2	—	-11.34

Reasoning MiniMax M1 leads

MiniMax M1: 26.9 (#126), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Hard Prompts	1339	1433
ARC-AGI-2	—	1.3%
SimpleBench	—	31%
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	69.4%
ARC-AGI-1	—	11%
CritPt	—	0%
Chess Puzzles	—	12%
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	9%
DTBench	—	80.3%
LMCA	—	29.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	143.85
ForecastBench	—	59.7

Math Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 37.5 (#151), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Math	1361	1432
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	86.7%
Omni-MATH	—	71.8%
MATH Level 5	—	68.9%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	—	8.5%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)	—	0%

Knowledge Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 36.4 (#170), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Expert	1317	1463
GPQA Diamond	—	80.1%
SimpleQA Verified	—	40.4%
MMLU-Pro	—	84.4%
Confabulations	—	15.6%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	9.3%
GPQA (HELM)	—	72.7%

Multilingual Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 45.8 (#163), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Non-English	1319	1409
LMArena Chinese	1360	1481
LMArena French	1370	1445
LMArena German	1350	1433
LMArena Japanese	1217	1399
LMArena Korean	1266	1391
LMArena Russian	1329	1411
LMArena Spanish	1353	1430

Instruction Following Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 69.3 (#174), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Instruction Following	1312	1408
IFEval	—	83.5%

Long Context Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#141), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
Fiction.LiveBench	69.4%	75%
LMArena Longer Query	1326	1426

Writing & Preference Qwen3 235B-A22B leads

MiniMax M1: 53.1 (#161), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax M1	Qwen3 235B-A22B
LMArena Text	1343	1419
LMArena Creative Writing	1298	1384
LMArena Multi-Turn	1335	1432
Short-Story Creative Writing	—	83%
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1366
WildBench	—	86.6%

Frequently asked questions

Is MiniMax M1 better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?

Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 40.3 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, MiniMax M1 or Qwen3 235B-A22B?

MiniMax M1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.55 per million input tokens and $2.20 per million output tokens; Qwen3 235B-A22B lists at $0.70 and $2.80.

Is MiniMax M1 or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?

Qwen3 235B-A22B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 39.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do MiniMax M1 and Qwen3 235B-A22B share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax M1 has 18 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.