# Llama 3-8B vs MiniMax-M2.1

> MiniMax-M2.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.4 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-8b-vs-minimax-m2-1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3-8B scores higher in 0 categories and MiniMax-M2.1 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where MiniMax-M2.1 leads 37.7 to 7.8.
- Llama 3-8B is cheaper at $0.14 / $0.14 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.1.
- MiniMax-M2.1 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 8K.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | MiniMax |
| Noometry Index | 25.3 | 38.4 |
| Rank | 338 | 177 |
| Context | 8K | 205K |
| Input $/M | $0.14 | $0.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.14 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 3-8B: 30.5 (#285)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 40.1 (#132)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1152 | 1421 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1384 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 31.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 36.9% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 623.83 |
| HumanEval+ | 56.7% | — |
| MBPP+ | 54.8% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3-8B: —
- MiniMax-M2.1: 27.7 (#91)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 36.6% |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3-8B: 13.8 (#321)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 15.8 (#301)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1133 | 1410 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 11.2% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| DTBench | 43.9% | — |
| Adversarial NLI | 57.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 116.33 | — |
| ForecastBench | 58.6 | — |
| WinoGrande | 75.7% | — |

## Math

- Llama 3-8B: 8.3 (#317)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 35.6 (#142)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1151 | 1396 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 6.1% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#303)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 37.7 (#143)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1113 | 1432 |
| GPQA Diamond | 26.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 11.8% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 82.8% | — |
| MMLU | 68.8% | — |
| OpenBookQA | 82.6% | — |
| TriviaQA | 67.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#256)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 50.2 (#123)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1098 | 1378 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1076 | 1430 |
| LMArena French | 1158 | 1405 |
| LMArena German | 1104 | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | 967 | 1287 |
| LMArena Korean | 1003 | 1297 |
| LMArena Russian | 1109 | 1386 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1172 | 1396 |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3-8B: 58.7 (#255)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 74.0 (#108)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1127 | 1399 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#246)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#98)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1128 | 1416 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3-8B: 37.7 (#251)
- MiniMax-M2.1: 58.5 (#114)

| Benchmark | Llama 3-8B | MiniMax-M2.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1166 | 1392 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1150 | 1362 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1152 | 1396 |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3-8B better than MiniMax-M2.1?

MiniMax-M2.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.4 to 25.3 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3-8B costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Llama 3-8B or MiniMax-M2.1?

Llama 3-8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.14 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.1 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

### Is Llama 3-8B or MiniMax-M2.1 better for coding?

MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 30.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2.1 does, with 205K tokens against 8K.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3-8B and MiniMax-M2.1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3-8B has 34 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.