Model comparison
MiniMax-M2 vs Ministral 8B
MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.4 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 3.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.
MiniMax
Mistral AISummary
- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax-M2 scores higher in 9 categories and Ministral 8B in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where MiniMax-M2 leads 37.0 to 12.6.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.
- Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 205K.
Side by side
| MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | MiniMax | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 37.4 | 28.2 |
| Released | 2025-10-27 | 2024-10-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 205K | 262K |
| Max output | 131K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.20 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 21 | 17 |
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Category by category
Coding MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159), Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | 1202 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 61% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1297 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109), Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 30% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 11.1% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 160.6 | — |
Reasoning Too close to call
MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258), Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1357 | 1191 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 57.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 14.8% | — |
| DTBench | — | 45.7% |
Math MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160), Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1352 | 1188 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 14.9% |
Knowledge MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163), Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1337 | 1170 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 27.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 7.4% |
Multilingual MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171), Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1313 | 1165 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1193 |
| LMArena Russian | 1331 | 1195 |
| LMArena French | 1335 | — |
| LMArena German | 1355 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1326 | — |
Instruction Following MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166), Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1161 |
Long Context MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153), Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1331 | 1212 |
Writing & Preference MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162), Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Ministral 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1340 | 1191 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1286 | 1175 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1361 | 1166 |
Frequently asked questions
Is MiniMax-M2 better than Ministral 8B?
MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.4 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 3.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, MiniMax-M2 or Ministral 8B?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.
Is MiniMax-M2 or Ministral 8B better for coding?
MiniMax-M2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.3 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Ministral 8B does, with 262K tokens against 205K.
How many benchmarks do MiniMax-M2 and Ministral 8B share?
12 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax-M2 has 21 scored results on Noometry and Ministral 8B has 17.