Noometry

Model comparison

Grok-3 mini vs MiniMax-M3

MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 41.0 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.

Grok-3 mini xAI

41.0

Rank #130 Confirmed

MiniMax-M3 MiniMax

43.5

Rank #81 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok-3 mini scores higher in 2 categories and MiniMax-M3 in 6 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where MiniMax-M3 leads 29.3 to 13.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 76.3% for Grok-3 mini and 90.9% for MiniMax-M3.
  • MiniMax-M3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Grok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
ProviderxAIMiniMax
Noometry Index41.043.5
Released2025-04-092026-06-01
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window—1M
Max output—512K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.30
Output $ / M tokens—$1.20
Results tracked3541

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Category by category

Coding MiniMax-M3 leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.4 (#126), MiniMax-M3: 41.5 (#111)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Coding13801470
FrontierCode—14.7%
Aider Polyglot49.3%—
LMArena WebDev—1482
SciCode—47.1%
WeirdML42.6%—
ALE-Bench—640.02

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: —, MiniMax-M3: 22.5 (#121)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
APEX-Agents—37.7%
OSWorld 2.0—4.6%
GBAEval—0.9%
Vending-Bench 2—2,158

Reasoning MiniMax-M3 leads

Grok-3 mini: 13.8 (#323), MiniMax-M3: 29.3 (#83)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Hard Prompts13741447
Epoch Capabilities Index140.35147
ARC-AGI-20.4%—
SimpleBench—45.8%
Kagi LLM Benchmark61.3%—
NYT Connections (extended)—65.1%
ARC-AGI-116.5%—
CritPt—3.7%
Chess Puzzles—14%
Mystery Game Puzzles—8%
DTBench—78.9%
LMCA—33.7%
Surface Evolver Bench—55%
ForecastBench—61.4

Math Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 40.3 (#78), MiniMax-M3: 39.1 (#83)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202577.8%71.1%
LMArena Math13861432
ProofBench—18%
Omni-MATH31.8%—
MATH Level 590.9%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)5.9%—

Knowledge MiniMax-M3 leads

Grok-3 mini: 46.3 (#75), MiniMax-M3: 58.4 (#32)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
GPQA Diamond76.3%90.9%
LMArena Expert13951462
MMLU-Pro79.9%—
Confabulations10.8%—
GPQA (HELM)67.5%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Grok-3 mini: —, MiniMax-M3: 39.5 (#45)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Vision—1254
LMArena Document—1435

Multilingual MiniMax-M3 leads

Grok-3 mini: 48.3 (#141), MiniMax-M3: 53.2 (#70)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Non-English13521420
LMArena Chinese13871465
LMArena French13571445
LMArena German13501424
LMArena Japanese13431381
LMArena Korean13361372
LMArena Russian13521430
LMArena Spanish13791431

Instruction Following Grok-3 mini leads

Grok-3 mini: 78.7 (#8), MiniMax-M3: 75.7 (#56)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Instruction Following13561433
IFEval95.1%—

Long Context MiniMax-M3 leads

Grok-3 mini: 41.0 (#142), MiniMax-M3: 44.2 (#68)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Longer Query13721445
Fiction.LiveBench66.7%—

Writing & Preference MiniMax-M3 leads

Grok-3 mini: 52.7 (#163), MiniMax-M3: 62.3 (#79)

BenchmarkGrok-3 miniMiniMax-M3
LMArena Text13701433
LMArena Creative Writing13421405
LMArena Multi-Turn13551441
Short-Story Creative Writing73.5%—
WildBench65.1%—
EQ-Bench 4—1150

Frequently asked questions

Is Grok-3 mini better than MiniMax-M3?

MiniMax-M3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 41.0 on the Noometry Index.

Is Grok-3 mini or MiniMax-M3 better for coding?

MiniMax-M3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.5 versus 40.4 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Grok-3 mini and MiniMax-M3 share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok-3 mini has 35 scored results on Noometry and MiniMax-M3 has 41.

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