# Claude Opus 5.5 vs MiniMax-M3

> Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M3 costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 23

## Summary

- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher in 10 categories and MiniMax-M3 in 0 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Claude Opus 5.5 leads 92.4 to 39.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ProofBench: 100% for Claude Opus 5.5 and 18% for MiniMax-M3.
- MiniMax-M3 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for Claude Opus 5.5.
- MiniMax-M3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 68.5 | 43.5 |
| Rank | 3 | 81 |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Input $/M | $4 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $20 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Opus 5.5: 71.4 (#1)
- MiniMax-M3: 41.5 (#111)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierCode | 54.4% | 14.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1820 | 1482 |
| SciCode | 66.9% | 47.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1545 | 1470 |
| CursorBench | 57.8% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 62.3% | — |
| MirrorCode | 77.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 640.02 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Opus 5.5: 45.3 (#13)
- MiniMax-M3: 22.5 (#121)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 73.5% | 37.7% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | — | 4.6% |
| GBAEval | — | 0.9% |
| GDP.pdf | 30.6% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 2,158 |

## Reasoning

- Claude Opus 5.5: 79.5 (#2)
- MiniMax-M3: 29.3 (#83)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 88.5% | 65.1% |
| CritPt | 31.7% | 3.7% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1545 | 1447 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 71% | 8% |
| DTBench | 98.9% | 78.9% |
| LMCA | 68.2% | 33.7% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 92.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | — | 45.8% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 97.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 14% |
| EBR-Bench | 71.4% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 55% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147 |
| ForecastBench | — | 61.4 |

## Math

- Claude Opus 5.5: 92.4 (#2)
- MiniMax-M3: 39.1 (#83)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 71.1% |
| ProofBench | 100% | 18% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 91.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 95% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1432 |

## Knowledge

- Claude Opus 5.5: 66.6 (#9)
- MiniMax-M3: 58.4 (#32)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.6% | 90.9% |
| LMArena Expert | 1564 | 1462 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 72.2% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Opus 5.5: 56.5 (#2)
- MiniMax-M3: 39.5 (#45)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1254 |
| Furniture Assembly | 83.3% | — |
| LMArena Document | — | 1435 |

## Multilingual

- Claude Opus 5.5: 59.8 (#1)
- MiniMax-M3: 53.2 (#70)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1513 | 1420 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1572 | 1465 |
| LMArena Russian | 1532 | 1430 |
| LMArena French | — | 1445 |
| LMArena German | — | 1424 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1381 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1372 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1431 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Opus 5.5: 80.1 (#2)
- MiniMax-M3: 75.7 (#56)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1535 | 1433 |

## Long Context

- Claude Opus 5.5: 47.3 (#18)
- MiniMax-M3: 44.2 (#68)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1540 | 1445 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Opus 5.5: 78.7 (#3)
- MiniMax-M3: 62.3 (#79)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 5.5 | MiniMax-M3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1518 | 1433 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1538 | 1405 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1520 | 1441 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2050 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | — | 1150 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Opus 5.5 better than MiniMax-M3?

Claude Opus 5.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 68.5 to 43.5 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M3 costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 5.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 5.5 or MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 5.5 lists at $4 and $20.

### Is Claude Opus 5.5 or MiniMax-M3 better for coding?

Claude Opus 5.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 71.4 versus 41.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 5.5 and MiniMax-M3 share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 5.5 has 35 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M3 has 41.