Noometry

Model comparison

MiniMax-M2.1 vs Qwen3.5-Flash

Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

MiniMax-M2.1 MiniMax

38.9

Rank #178 Confirmed

Qwen3.5-Flash Alibaba (Qwen)

42.5

Rank #112 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3.5-Flash in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5-Flash leads 33.7 to 16.6.
  • Qwen3.5-Flash is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.40 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.1.
  • Qwen3.5-Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 205K.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

MiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
ProviderMiniMaxAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index38.942.5
Released2025-12-232026-02-23
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window205K1M
Max output131K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.30$0.10
Output $ / M tokens$1.20$0.40
Results tracked2232

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Category by category

Coding MiniMax-M2.1 leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 40.4 (#143), Qwen3.5-Flash: 34.2 (#242)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena WebDev13841244
LMArena Coding14211412
ALE-Bench623.83221.8

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 27.9 (#98), Qwen3.5-Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
Terminal-Bench36.6%—
Vending-Bench 2—462.69

Reasoning Qwen3.5-Flash leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 16.6 (#302), Qwen3.5-Flash: 33.7 (#72)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Hard Prompts14111403
NYT Connections (extended)11.2%—
Chess Puzzles—21%
Mystery Game Puzzles—20%
DTBench—82.9%
LMCA—29.1%
Epoch Capabilities Index—143.98

Math Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#138), Qwen3.5-Flash: 37.4 (#158)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Math13971407
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—18.2%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—84.4%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—6.2%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—0%

Knowledge Qwen3.5-Flash leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#147), Qwen3.5-Flash: 43.2 (#93)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
Vectara Hallucination Rate11.8%10.5%
LMArena Expert14311407
GPQA Diamond—82.3%
SimpleQA Verified—20.3%

Multilingual Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 50.0 (#128), Qwen3.5-Flash: 50.5 (#121)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Non-English13781385
LMArena Chinese14301446
LMArena French14041412
LMArena German13811390
LMArena Japanese12871368
LMArena Korean12981344
LMArena Russian13871379
LMArena Spanish13971400

Instruction Following MiniMax-M2.1 leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 73.8 (#112), Qwen3.5-Flash: 72.6 (#139)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Instruction Following14001374

Long Context Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#101), Qwen3.5-Flash: 42.4 (#124)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Longer Query14161392

Writing & Preference Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 58.3 (#120), Qwen3.5-Flash: 57.9 (#122)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.5-Flash
LMArena Text13921397
LMArena Creative Writing13611343
LMArena Multi-Turn13961393

Frequently asked questions

Is MiniMax-M2.1 better than Qwen3.5-Flash?

Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 38.9 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, MiniMax-M2.1 or Qwen3.5-Flash?

Qwen3.5-Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.1 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

Is MiniMax-M2.1 or Qwen3.5-Flash better for coding?

MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 34.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5-Flash does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3.5-Flash share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax-M2.1 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-Flash has 32.

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