# Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs MiniMax-M2

> MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.9 to 34.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-5-sonnet-vs-minimax-m2
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3.5 Sonnet scores higher in 3 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 6 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where MiniMax-M2 leads 34.6 to 18.0.
- MiniMax-M2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 34.4 | 36.9 |
| Rank | 225 | 201 |
| Context | — | 205K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | — | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.5 (#145)
- MiniMax-M2: 39.1 (#151)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1343 | 1370 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 61% |
| Aider Polyglot | 51.6% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1297 |
| GSO | 4.6% | — |
| WeirdML | 40% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 46.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 67.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 58.6% | — |
| CadEval | 48% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 81.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 74.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 32.1 (#61)
- MiniMax-M2: 24.9 (#102)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 30% |
| TheAgentCompany | 24% | — |
| Cybench | 17.5% | — |
| BALROG | 32.6% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 45.2% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 160.6 |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 22.5 (#176)
- MiniMax-M2: 18.6 (#256)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1305 | 1357 |
| SimpleBench | 41.4% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 57.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 14.8% |
| EnigmaEval | 0.9% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 56.7% | — |
| DTBench | 67.8% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 55% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.55 | — |
| ForecastBench | 60.7 | — |
| LiveBench | 59% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 18.0 (#282)
- MiniMax-M2: 34.6 (#158)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1306 | 1350 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 8.5% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 27.6% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 52.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 56.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 2.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 28.5 (#236)
- MiniMax-M2: 36.3 (#160)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1264 | 1336 |
| GPQA Diamond | 55.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 4.1% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 77.7% | — |
| Confabulations | 19.9% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 56.5% | — |
| MMLU | 87.3% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 26.0 (#115)
- MiniMax-M2: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1125 | — |
| Video-MME | 60% | — |
| GeoBench | 62% | — |
| VPCT | 33% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 43.4 (#180)
- MiniMax-M2: 45.6 (#165)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1283 | 1314 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1271 | 1367 |
| LMArena French | 1304 | 1336 |
| LMArena German | 1297 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1305 | 1332 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1289 | 1326 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1200 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 69.0 (#177)
- MiniMax-M2: 70.4 (#160)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1297 | 1329 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 69.3% | — |
| IFEval | 85.5% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 39.9 (#162)
- MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#148)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1311 | 1332 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 53.0 (#159)
- MiniMax-M2: 53.3 (#157)

| Benchmark | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1298 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1292 | 1288 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1326 | 1362 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 80.3% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1451 | — |
| WildBench | 79.2% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 53.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet better than MiniMax-M2?

MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.9 to 34.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 3.5 Sonnet or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (39.5 vs 39.1); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 3.5 Sonnet and MiniMax-M2 share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3.5 Sonnet has 60 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.