Noometry

Model comparison

MiniMax-M2.1 vs Qwen3.6 Flash

MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3.6 Flash score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Last verified . 1 shared benchmarks.

MiniMax-M2.1 MiniMax

38.9

Rank #178 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 Flash Alibaba (Qwen)

38.8

Rank #182 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. MiniMax-M2.1 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Flash in 3 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 Flash leads 29.0 to 16.6.
  • Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper at $0.19 / $1.13 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.1.
  • Qwen3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 205K.
  • MiniMax-M2.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

MiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
ProviderMiniMaxAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index38.938.8
Released2025-12-232026-04-27
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window205K1M
Max output131K66K
Input $ / M tokens$0.30$0.19
Output $ / M tokens$1.20$1.13
Results tracked2213

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 40.4 (#143), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
ALE-Bench623.83326.4
LMArena WebDev1384—
LMArena Coding1421—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 27.9 (#98), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
Terminal-Bench36.6%—

Reasoning Qwen3.6 Flash leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 16.6 (#302), Qwen3.6 Flash: 29.0 (#96)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
SimpleBench—35.2%
NYT Connections (extended)11.2%—
Chess Puzzles—20%
LMArena Hard Prompts1411—
Mystery Game Puzzles—18%
DTBench—77.1%
LMCA—31%
Epoch Capabilities Index—143.26

Math Too close to call

MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#138), Qwen3.6 Flash: 39.0 (#117)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)—22.5%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—84.4%
LMArena Math1397—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—10.3%
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)—0%

Knowledge Qwen3.6 Flash leads

MiniMax-M2.1: 38.3 (#147), Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.1 (#100)

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
GPQA Diamond—83.3%
SimpleQA Verified—15.9%
Vectara Hallucination Rate11.8%—
LMArena Expert1431—

Multilingual Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 50.0 (#128), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Non-English1378—
LMArena Chinese1430—
LMArena French1404—
LMArena German1381—
LMArena Japanese1287—
LMArena Korean1298—
LMArena Russian1387—
LMArena Spanish1397—

Instruction Following Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 73.8 (#112), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Instruction Following1400—

Long Context Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 43.2 (#101), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Longer Query1416—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

MiniMax-M2.1: 58.3 (#120), Qwen3.6 Flash: —

BenchmarkMiniMax-M2.1Qwen3.6 Flash
LMArena Text1392—
LMArena Creative Writing1361—
LMArena Multi-Turn1396—

Frequently asked questions

Is MiniMax-M2.1 better than Qwen3.6 Flash?

MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3.6 Flash score almost the same on the Noometry Index (38.9 vs 38.8), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

Which is cheaper, MiniMax-M2.1 or Qwen3.6 Flash?

Qwen3.6 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.19 per million input tokens and $1.13 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2.1 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Flash does, with 1M tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do MiniMax-M2.1 and Qwen3.6 Flash share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. MiniMax-M2.1 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.

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