# Claude Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax-M2.5

> Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 38.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.5 costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-minimax-m2-5
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 27

## Summary

- They share 27 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher in 9 categories and MiniMax-M2.5 in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 4.8 leads 78.4 to 26.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 91.1% for Claude Opus 4.8 and 16.8% for MiniMax-M2.5.
- MiniMax-M2.5 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $5 / $25 for Claude Opus 4.8.
- Claude Opus 4.8 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 205K.
- MiniMax-M2.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 60.7 | 38.3 |
| Rank | 13 | 188 |
| Context | 1M | 205K |
| Input $/M | $5 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $25 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4.8: 59.9 (#12)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 48.1 (#58)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1556 | 1387 |
| LMArena Coding | 1490 | 1381 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,564 | 618.17 |
| DeepSWE | 59% | — |
| FrontierCode | 46.5% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 75.8% |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | 68.3% |
| SciCode | 53.5% | — |
| GSO | 47.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 82.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4.8: 47.6 (#11)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 30.4 (#77)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,787 | -23.16 |
| Terminal-Bench | — | 42.7% |
| APEX-Agents | 48.9% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 8.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 39.7% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 50.2% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 33.8% | — |
| GBAEval | 70.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 24% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1204 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4.8: 64.7 (#16)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 17.5 (#292)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | 4.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 88.8% | 55.2% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 91.1% | 16.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.5% | 63.7% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1482 | 1372 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 158.21 | 146.68 |
| SimpleBench | 64.8% | — |
| CritPt | 20.9% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 34% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 23.5% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 28.6% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 36% | — |
| DTBench | 94.9% | — |
| LMCA | 57.5% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 87.5% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4.8: 78.4 (#13)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 26.9 (#253)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| ProofBench | 69% | 4% |
| LMArena Math | 1487 | 1378 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 80% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 56.1% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 91.8% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 98.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 47.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 31.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4.8: 61.3 (#29)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 39.2 (#135)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1502 | 1379 |
| GPQA Diamond | 91% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 53% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.1% |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4.8: 42.9 (#26)
- MiniMax-M2.5: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1294 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 14.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 42.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1475 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4.8: 55.2 (#33)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 47.1 (#152)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1450 | 1338 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1507 | 1393 |
| LMArena French | 1481 | 1362 |
| LMArena German | 1472 | 1362 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1440 | 1171 |
| LMArena Korean | 1432 | 1232 |
| LMArena Russian | 1474 | 1358 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1466 | 1354 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4.8: 77.4 (#24)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 71.5 (#148)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1353 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4.8: 45.4 (#35)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 37.5 (#216)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1483 | 1366 |
| CL-bench | — | 11.4% |
| CL-bench Life | — | 6.3% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4.8: 72.0 (#16)
- MiniMax-M2.5: 53.9 (#153)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax-M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1461 | 1359 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1840 | 1361 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1476 | 1364 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1281 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4.8 better than MiniMax-M2.5?

Claude Opus 4.8 is the stronger model overall, scoring 60.7 to 38.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.5 costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4.8's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4.8 or MiniMax-M2.5?

MiniMax-M2.5 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4.8 lists at $5 and $25.

### Is Claude Opus 4.8 or MiniMax-M2.5 better for coding?

Claude Opus 4.8 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 59.9 versus 48.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Opus 4.8 does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4.8 and MiniMax-M2.5 share?

27 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4.8 has 65 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.5 has 33.