Model comparison

Claude Opus 4 vs MiniMax-M2.1

Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 costs 57× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.

Claude Opus 4 Anthropic

42.9

Rank #93 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2.1 MiniMax

38.4

Rank #177 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Opus 4 scores higher in 7 categories and MiniMax-M2.1 in 2 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Opus 4 leads 27.4 to 15.8.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $15 / $75 for Claude Opus 4.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 200K.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Opus 4 and MiniMax-M2.1 specifications
Claude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index42.938.4
Released2025-05-222025-12-23
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window200K205K
Max output32K131K
Input $ / M tokens$15$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$75$1.20
Results tracked5622

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Category by category

Coding Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 47.8 (#55), MiniMax-M2.1: 40.1 (#132)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Coding14421421
SWE-bench Verified70.7%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)67.6%—
Aider Polyglot72%—
LMArena WebDev—1384
GSO6.9%—
WeirdML43.7%—
ALE-Bench—623.83
AlgoTune1.33—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 34.5 (#39), MiniMax-M2.1: 27.7 (#91)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
Terminal-Bench—36.6%
Cybench38%—
DeepResearch Bench46.8%—
LMArena Search1127—
METR Time Horizons63.9%—

Reasoning Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 27.4 (#104), MiniMax-M2.1: 15.8 (#301)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Hard Prompts13991410
ARC-AGI-28.6%—
SimpleBench58.8%—
Kagi LLM Benchmark74.3%—
NYT Connections (extended)—11.2%
ARC-AGI-135.7%—
CritPt0.3%—
EnigmaEval5.6%—
DTBench81.6%—
LMCA37.4%—
Epoch Capabilities Index142.67—
ForecastBench61.1—

Math Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 40.2 (#80), MiniMax-M2.1: 35.6 (#142)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Math13911396
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202564.4%—
Omni-MATH61.6%—
MATH Level 585%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)4.5%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 43.9 (#82), MiniMax-M2.1: 37.7 (#143)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%11.8%
LMArena Expert13841432
GPQA Diamond76.3%—
Humanity's Last Exam10.7%—
MMLU-Pro87.5%—
Confabulations15.9%—
GPQA (HELM)70.8%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Opus 4: 30.9 (#101), MiniMax-M2.1: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Vision1192—
GeoBench49%—
VPCT38%—

Multilingual MiniMax-M2.1 leads

Claude Opus 4: 49.0 (#133), MiniMax-M2.1: 50.2 (#123)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Non-English13621378
LMArena Chinese13861430
LMArena French13701405
LMArena German13911380
LMArena Japanese13321287
LMArena Korean13181297
LMArena Russian13921386
LMArena Spanish13881396

Instruction Following Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 77.3 (#26), MiniMax-M2.1: 74.0 (#108)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Instruction Following14061399
IFEval91.8%—

Long Context MiniMax-M2.1 leads

Claude Opus 4: 39.5 (#167), MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#98)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Longer Query14221416
Fiction.LiveBench61.1%—

Writing & Preference Claude Opus 4 leads

Claude Opus 4: 61.4 (#85), MiniMax-M2.1: 58.5 (#114)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkClaude Opus 4MiniMax-M2.1
LMArena Text13771392
LMArena Creative Writing13861362
LMArena Multi-Turn13961396
Short-Story Creative Writing83.6%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1580—
WildBench85.2%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Opus 4 better than MiniMax-M2.1?

Claude Opus 4 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 38.4 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2.1 costs 57× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Opus 4's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Opus 4 or MiniMax-M2.1?

MiniMax-M2.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Opus 4 lists at $15 and $75.

Is Claude Opus 4 or MiniMax-M2.1 better for coding?

Claude Opus 4 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2.1 does, with 205K tokens against 200K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Opus 4 and MiniMax-M2.1 share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Opus 4 has 56 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2.1 has 22.

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