Model comparison

MiniMax-M2.1 vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3-30B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 17 shared benchmarks.

MiniMax-M2.1

MiniMax

38.9

Rank #178 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B

Alibaba (Qwen)

38.9

Rank #179 Confirmed

Summary

They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher in 6 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 3 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in long context, where MiniMax-M2.1 leads 43.2 to 31.0.
Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper at $0.12 / $0.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.1.
MiniMax-M2.1 accepts more context: 205K tokens versus 41K.

Side by side

MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3-30B-A3B specifications
	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
Provider	MiniMax	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	38.9	38.9
Released	2025-12-23	2025-04-28
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	205K	41K
Max output	131K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.30	$0.12
Output $ / M tokens	$1.20	$0.50
Results tracked	22	32

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding MiniMax-M2.1 leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 40.4 (#143), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Coding	1421	1416
LMArena WebDev	1384	—
SciCode	—	33.3%
WeirdML	—	29.8%
ALE-Bench	623.83	—

Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 27.9 (#98), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
Terminal-Bench	36.6%	—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	41.4%

Reasoning Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 16.6 (#302), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Hard Prompts	1411	1398
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	54.9%
NYT Connections (extended)	11.2%	—
CritPt	—	0.3%
Chess Puzzles	—	8%
DTBench	—	69.3%
LMCA	—	22.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	139.63

Math Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#138), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Math	1397	1394
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions	—	47.8%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	70.3%

Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#147), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Expert	1431	1396
GPQA Diamond	—	70.1%
Confabulations	—	12.3%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	11.8%	—

Multilingual Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 50.0 (#128), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English	1378	1372
LMArena Chinese	1430	1433
LMArena French	1404	1418
LMArena German	1381	1380
LMArena Japanese	1287	1337
LMArena Korean	1298	1331
LMArena Russian	1387	1370
LMArena Spanish	1397	1404

Instruction Following MiniMax-M2.1 leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 73.8 (#112), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following	1400	1363

Long Context MiniMax-M2.1 leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#101), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Longer Query	1416	1379
Fiction.LiveBench	—	40.6%

Writing & Preference MiniMax-M2.1 leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 58.3 (#120), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2.1	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text	1392	1384
LMArena Creative Writing	1361	1317
LMArena Multi-Turn	1396	1378
Short-Story Creative Writing	—	75.3%

Frequently asked questions

Is MiniMax-M2.1 better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3-30B-A3B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, MiniMax-M2.1 or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Qwen3-30B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.12 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.1 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

Is MiniMax-M2.1 or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?

MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 37.5 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax-M2.1 does, with 205K tokens against 41K.

How many benchmarks do MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax-M2.1 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.