# Claude Opus 4.1 vs MiniMax-M2

> Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 36.9 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 57× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-1-vs-minimax-m2
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4.1 leads 31.6 to 18.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench: 38% for Claude Opus 4.1 and 30% for MiniMax-M2.
- MiniMax-M2 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.1.
- MiniMax-M2 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 200K.
- MiniMax-M2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 40.8 | 36.9 |
| Rank | 136 | 201 |
| Context | 200K | 205K |
| Input $/M | $15 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $75 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.1: 44.3 (#69)
- MiniMax-M2: 39.1 (#151)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1390 | 1297 |
| LMArena Coding | 1479 | 1370 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 73.3% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 61% |
| WeirdML | 45.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 674.77 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.34 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.1: 34.8 (#38)
- MiniMax-M2: 24.9 (#102)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 38% | 30% |
| GDPval | 43.6% | — |
| Cybench | 42% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 48.3% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1148 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 66.8% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 160.6 |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.1: 31.6 (#70)
- MiniMax-M2: 18.6 (#256)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1443 | 1357 |
| SimpleBench | 60% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 57.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 14.8% |
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 7.2% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 7.9% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 21% | — |
| DTBench | 80% | — |
| LMCA | 37.1% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.11 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.1: 22.0 (#267)
- MiniMax-M2: 34.6 (#158)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1430 | 1350 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 12.6% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 68.9% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 7.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.1: 41.9 (#93)
- MiniMax-M2: 36.3 (#160)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1439 | 1336 |
| GPQA Diamond | 77.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 11.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 17.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 11.8% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.1: 26.2 (#114)
- MiniMax-M2: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| VPCT | 35% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.1: 52.1 (#90)
- MiniMax-M2: 45.6 (#165)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1405 | 1314 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1427 | 1367 |
| LMArena French | 1432 | 1336 |
| LMArena German | 1412 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1421 | 1332 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1448 | 1326 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1378 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1381 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.1: 75.8 (#53)
- MiniMax-M2: 70.4 (#160)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1436 | 1329 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.1: 44.5 (#60)
- MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#148)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1455 | 1332 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.1: 62.6 (#70)
- MiniMax-M2: 53.3 (#157)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.1 | MiniMax-M2 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1419 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1412 | 1288 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1444 | 1362 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 84.7% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.1 better than MiniMax-M2?

Claude Opus 4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.8 to 36.9 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 57× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.1 or MiniMax-M2?

MiniMax-M2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.1 lists at $15 and $75.

### Is Claude Opus 4.1 or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 39.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2 does, with 205K tokens against 200K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.1 and MiniMax-M2 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.1 has 48 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.