Model comparison
MiniMax-M2 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
MiniMax-M2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.4 vs 38.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.
MiniMax
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax-M2 scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 25.5 to 19.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 57.8% for MiniMax-M2 and 49.5% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- MiniMax-M2 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 205K.
Side by side
| MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | MiniMax | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 37.4 | 38.1 |
| Released | 2025-10-27 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 205K | 262K |
| Max output | 131K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.20 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 21 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 61% | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1297 | 1275 |
| LMArena Coding | 1370 | 1412 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use MiniMax-M2 leads
MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 30% | 27.2% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 160.6 | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 57.8% | 49.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1357 | 1372 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 14.8% | — |
Math Too close to call
MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1352 | 1365 |
Knowledge Too close to call
MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1337 | 1338 |
Multilingual Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1313 | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1366 | 1357 |
| LMArena French | 1335 | 1398 |
| LMArena German | 1355 | 1325 |
| LMArena Russian | 1331 | 1366 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1326 | 1360 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1305 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1328 | 1355 |
Long Context Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1331 | 1378 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | MiniMax-M2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1340 | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1286 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1361 | 1365 |
Frequently asked questions
Is MiniMax-M2 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
MiniMax-M2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (37.4 vs 38.1), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, MiniMax-M2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
MiniMax-M2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is MiniMax-M2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
MiniMax-M2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.3 versus 35.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 205K.
How many benchmarks do MiniMax-M2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
19 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax-M2 has 21 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.