# Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax M1

> Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 40.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax M1 costs 6.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-4-5-vs-minimax-m1
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 7 categories and MiniMax M1 in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 66.5 to 53.1.
- MiniMax M1 is cheaper at $0.55 / $2.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 200K.
- MiniMax M1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 44.1 | 40.3 |
| Rank | 81 | 150 |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $3 | $0.55 |
| Output $/M | $15 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.3 (#61)
- MiniMax M1: 39.9 (#153)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1489 | 1359 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 71.3% | — |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 71.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1393 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | 67% | — |
| SciCode | 44.7% | — |
| GSO | 14.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 47.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 796.15 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.52 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.3 (#32)
- MiniMax M1: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 46.5% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 73.2% | — |
| GDPval | 42.5% | — |
| Remote Labor Index | 2.1% | — |
| τ²-bench Airline | 72% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 25.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Retail | 72.4% | — |
| τ²-bench Telecom | 84.9% | — |
| Cybench | 60% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 52.6% | — |
| OSWorld | 62.9% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1159 | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 67.4% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,839 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#125)
- MiniMax M1: 26.9 (#126)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | 1339 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 13.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 54.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 57.9% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 37.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 63.7% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 12% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 6% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 2.4% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 17% | — |
| DTBench | 83.2% | — |
| LMCA | 38.8% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 146.84 | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.9 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 32.3 (#216)
- MiniMax M1: 37.5 (#151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1449 | 1361 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 23.9% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 2.4% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 77.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 19% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 55.3% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 97.7% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 15.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 4.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#76)
- MiniMax M1: 36.4 (#170)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1482 | 1317 |
| GPQA Diamond | 82.3% | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 13.7% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 30.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 86.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 68.6% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.8 (#89)
- MiniMax M1: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| VPCT | 39.8% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1450 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.4 (#69)
- MiniMax M1: 45.8 (#163)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1425 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1459 | 1360 |
| LMArena French | 1458 | 1370 |
| LMArena German | 1427 | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1390 | 1217 |
| LMArena Korean | 1403 | 1266 |
| LMArena Russian | 1437 | 1329 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1457 | 1353 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.0 (#78)
- MiniMax M1: 69.3 (#174)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1459 | 1312 |
| IFEval | 85% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#46)
- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1476 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 69.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.5 (#34)
- MiniMax M1: 53.1 (#161)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1439 | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1465 | 1335 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1678 | — |
| WildBench | 85.4% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than MiniMax M1?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.1 to 40.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax M1 costs 6.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax M1?

MiniMax M1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.55 per million input tokens and $2.20 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

### Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax M1 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.3 versus 39.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

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

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax M1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.