# Claude Opus 4 vs MiniMax M1

> Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax M1 costs 35× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-4-vs-minimax-m1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4 scores higher in 7 categories and MiniMax M1 in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Claude Opus 4 leads 47.8 to 39.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Fiction.LiveBench: 61.1% for Claude Opus 4 and 69.4% for MiniMax M1.
- MiniMax M1 is cheaper at $0.40 / $2.20 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 200K.
- MiniMax M1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 42.9 | 39.7 |
| Rank | 93 | 146 |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $15 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $75 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 4: 47.8 (#55)
- MiniMax M1: 39.2 (#149)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1442 | 1359 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 70.7% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 67.6% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 72% | — |
| GSO | 6.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.33 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 4: 34.5 (#39)
- MiniMax M1: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | 38% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 46.8% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1127 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 63.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 4: 27.4 (#104)
- MiniMax M1: 25.8 (#125)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1399 | 1340 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 8.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 58.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 74.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 35.7% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 5.6% | — |
| DTBench | 81.6% | — |
| LMCA | 37.4% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 142.67 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |

## Math

- Claude Opus 4: 40.2 (#80)
- MiniMax M1: 34.8 (#152)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1391 | 1360 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 64.4% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 61.6% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 85% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 4: 43.9 (#82)
- MiniMax M1: 35.7 (#168)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1384 | 1316 |
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 10.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 87.5% | — |
| Confabulations | 15.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 70.8% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 4: 30.9 (#101)
- MiniMax M1: —

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1192 | — |
| GeoBench | 49% | — |
| VPCT | 38% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 4: 49.0 (#133)
- MiniMax M1: 46.0 (#157)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1362 | 1320 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1386 | 1361 |
| LMArena French | 1370 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1391 | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1332 | 1220 |
| LMArena Korean | 1318 | 1263 |
| LMArena Russian | 1392 | 1330 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1388 | 1354 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 4: 77.3 (#26)
- MiniMax M1: 69.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1406 | 1312 |
| IFEval | 91.8% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 4: 39.5 (#167)
- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#136)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | 61.1% | 69.4% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1422 | 1326 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 4: 61.4 (#85)
- MiniMax M1: 53.3 (#155)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1377 | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1386 | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1396 | 1335 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83.6% | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1580 | — |
| WildBench | 85.2% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 4 better than MiniMax M1?

Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 39.7 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax M1 costs 35× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4 or MiniMax M1?

MiniMax M1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4 lists at $15 and $75.

### Is Claude Opus 4 or MiniMax M1 better for coding?

Claude Opus 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 39.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 200K.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4 and MiniMax M1 share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4 has 56 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.