# Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs MiniMax M1

> Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 40.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax M1 costs 6.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-minimax-m1
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax M1 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 26.9.
- MiniMax M1 is cheaper at $0.55 / $2.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
- MiniMax M1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 50.3 | 40.3 |
| Rank | 50 | 150 |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Input $/M | $3 | $0.55 |
| Output $/M | $15 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.3 (#67)
- MiniMax M1: 39.9 (#153)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1359 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1522 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#28)
- MiniMax M1: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#45)
- MiniMax M1: 26.9 (#126)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1339 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.24 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |

## Math

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 52.9 (#49)
- MiniMax M1: 37.5 (#151)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1462 | 1361 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.7 (#65)
- MiniMax M1: 36.4 (#170)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1317 |
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#68)
- MiniMax M1: —

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.4 (#41)
- MiniMax M1: 45.8 (#163)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1360 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1370 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1420 | 1217 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1266 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1329 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | 1353 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.4 (#25)
- MiniMax M1: 69.3 (#174)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1475 | 1312 |

## Long Context

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#44)
- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1326 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 69.4% |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.2 (#22)
- MiniMax M1: 53.1 (#161)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1335 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than MiniMax M1?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.3 to 40.3 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax M1 costs 6.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 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 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.

### Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or MiniMax M1 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.3 versus 39.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 1M tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and MiniMax M1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.