MiniMax-M3 vs Claude Sonnet 4.6
API pricing, benchmark indices and specs — updated 19 October 2026.
anthropic · B · API-only
Input / 1M
$3.00
Output / 1M
$15.00
AA index
30.1
proprietary · 1M context
Specification comparison
Differences are highlighted; identical values are muted.
| Specification | MiniMax-M3 | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Open weights · also via API | API-only (closed weights) |
| Parameters | 427.0 B | n/a — API-only |
| Architecture | MiniMaxM3SparseForConditionalGeneration | n/a — API-only |
| Context length | 524,288 | 1,000,000 |
| Licence | other | Proprietary |
| Commercial use | Unknown | Per API terms |
| Languages | — | n/a — API-only |
| Downloads 30d | 203,491 | n/a — API-only |
| Downloads all time | 924 K | n/a — API-only |
| Quantizations on the Hub | SAFETENSORS | n/a — API-only |
| Gated | No | n/a — API-only |
| First seen on the Hub | 2026-06-02 | n/a — API-only |
| API input price / 1M tokens | $0.30 | $3.00 |
| API output price / 1M tokens | $1.20 | $15.00 |
| Est. cost per 1M input + 1M output tokens | $1.50 | $18.00 |
| Cached input / 1M tokens | $0.06 | $0.30 |
| AA Intelligence Index | 29.2 | 30.1 |
| AA Coding Index | 58.6 | 63 |
| AA Agentic Index | 29.5 | 31.8 |
| Max output tokens | 512,000 | 128,000 |
| API providers | 12 | 5 |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning mode | Yes | Yes |
API cost
Estimated cost of 1M input + 1M output tokens via OpenRouter
MiniMax-M3
$1.50
Claude Sonnet 4.6
$18.00
MiniMax-M3 is 12.0× cheaper at list price.
VRAM side by side
On RTX 4090 · 24 GB · 8K context unless noted
MiniMax-M3 · fp16
1,004.2 GB / 24 GB