# Codestral vs MiniMax M1

> MiniMax M1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.3 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax M1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-minimax-m1
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where MiniMax M1 leads 39.9 to 27.3.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $0.55 / $2.20 for MiniMax M1.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
- MiniMax M1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 40.3 |
| Rank | 290 | 150 |
| Context | 256K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.55 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- MiniMax M1: 39.9 (#153)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1359 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- MiniMax M1: 26.9 (#126)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1339 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- MiniMax M1: 37.5 (#151)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1361 |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- MiniMax M1: 36.4 (#170)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1317 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- MiniMax M1: 45.8 (#163)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1360 |
| LMArena French | — | 1370 |
| LMArena German | — | 1350 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1217 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1266 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1329 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1353 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- MiniMax M1: 69.3 (#174)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1312 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#141)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 69.4% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1326 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- MiniMax M1: 53.1 (#161)

| Benchmark | Codestral | MiniMax M1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1343 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1298 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1335 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than MiniMax M1?

MiniMax M1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.3 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax M1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or MiniMax M1?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; MiniMax M1 lists at $0.55 and $2.20.

### Is Codestral or MiniMax M1 better for coding?

MiniMax M1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.9 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 256K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and MiniMax M1 share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax M1 has 18.