Noometry

Model comparison

Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax-M2

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 36.9 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 Anthropic

44.0

Rank #76 Confirmed

MiniMax-M2 MiniMax

36.9

Rank #201 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher in 8 categories and MiniMax-M2 in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads 66.7 to 53.3.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 37.3% for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and 14.8% for MiniMax-M2.
  • MiniMax-M2 is cheaper at $0.30 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.5.
  • Claude Sonnet 4.5 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 205K.
  • MiniMax-M2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Claude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
ProviderAnthropicMiniMax
Noometry Index44.036.9
Released2025-09-292025-10-27
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window1M205K
Max output64K131K
Input $ / M tokens$3$0.30
Output $ / M tokens$15$1.20
Results tracked7321

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Category by category

Coding Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 47.8 (#54), MiniMax-M2: 39.1 (#151)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)71.4%61%
LMArena WebDev13931297
LMArena Coding14891370
SWE-bench Verified71.3%—
SWE-bench Multilingual67%—
SciCode44.7%—
GSO14.7%—
WeirdML47.7%—
ALE-Bench796.15—
AlgoTune1.52—

Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 38.1 (#30), MiniMax-M2: 24.9 (#102)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
Terminal-Bench46.5%30%
Vending-Bench 23,839160.6
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard73.2%—
GDPval42.5%—
Remote Labor Index2.1%—
τ²-bench Airline72%—
τ²-bench Banking25.3%—
τ²-bench Retail72.4%—
τ²-bench Telecom84.9%—
Cybench60%—
DeepResearch Bench52.6%—
OSWorld62.9%—
LMArena Search1159—
METR Time Horizons67.4%—

Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 26.9 (#113), MiniMax-M2: 18.6 (#256)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
Kagi LLM Benchmark57.9%57.8%
NYT Connections (extended)37.3%14.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts14621357
ARC-AGI-213.6%—
SimpleBench54.3%—
ARC-AGI-163.7%—
CritPt1.1%—
Chess Puzzles12%—
EnigmaEval6%—
EBR-Bench2.4%—
Mystery Game Puzzles17%—
DTBench83.2%—
LMCA38.8%—
Epoch Capabilities Index146.84—
ForecastBench61.9—

Math MiniMax-M2 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 31.9 (#190), MiniMax-M2: 34.6 (#158)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Math14481350
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)23.9%—
FrontierMath Tier 42.4%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%—
ProofBench19%—
Omni-MATH55.3%—
MATH Level 597.7%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)15.2%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)4.2%—

Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 48.4 (#70), MiniMax-M2: 36.3 (#160)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Expert14831336
GPQA Diamond82.3%—
Humanity's Last Exam13.7%—
SimpleQA Verified30.7%—
MMLU-Pro86.9%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate12%—
GPQA (HELM)68.6%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 34.1 (#84), MiniMax-M2: —

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
VPCT39.8%—
LMArena Document1450—

Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 53.6 (#65), MiniMax-M2: 45.6 (#165)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Non-English14251314
LMArena Chinese14591367
LMArena French14591336
LMArena German14271366
LMArena Russian14361332
LMArena Spanish14571326
LMArena Japanese1390—
LMArena Korean1403—

Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 75.2 (#74), MiniMax-M2: 70.4 (#160)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Instruction Following14591329
IFEval85%—

Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 45.2 (#45), MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#148)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Longer Query14761332

Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads

Claude Sonnet 4.5: 66.7 (#33), MiniMax-M2: 53.3 (#157)

BenchmarkClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax-M2
LMArena Text14391340
LMArena Creative Writing14421288
LMArena Multi-Turn14651362
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1678—
WildBench85.4%—

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 better than MiniMax-M2?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 44.0 to 36.9 on the Noometry Index. MiniMax-M2 costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax-M2?

MiniMax-M2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.5 lists at $3 and $15.

Is Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax-M2 better for coding?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 47.8 versus 39.1 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 4.5 does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax-M2 share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has 73 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M2 has 21.

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