Alternatives to MiniMax M1

MiniMax LMArena 1342.8 $0.850/M on a balanced workload prices as of 2026-10-06

20 models are higher-scoring or cheaper, with neither dimension worse.

Of the 144 models carrying both an independent score and a published price at the same delivery mode, 58 score at least as high as MiniMax M1 and cost no more under at least one listed workload, with at least one of those dimensions improved. 20 match or beat its recorded context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning. 38 have a recorded capability loss, named on every row.

Dominance is not a property of a model. It is a property of a model, a capability lens and a workload, and all three are named on every row. Scores are LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset; prices are blended per million tokens. A higher score is not a drop-in replacement.

This page is built only while a candidate improves score or price without worsening the other under a listed workload. When that comparison no longer holds, it is not generated.

Where it holds

Workload	MiniMax M1 $/M	Recorded capabilities preserved	Recorded capability losses
Balanced	$0.850	18	33
Summarise	$0.490	20	34
Chat	$1.12	17	34
Code gen	$1.48	15	33
Agentic	$0.670	19	37

Workload mixes are defined on the methodology page. Cached input is priced at the cached rate, and reasoning tokens at the worse of the reasoning and output rates.

What you would be replacing

Intelligence	1342.8
Context window	1M
Max output	40K
Input modes	text
Tool use	yes
Extended reasoning	yes

Preserving recorded capabilities requires matching or beating these fields. Full record for MiniMax M1, or check MiniMax M1 against the whole catalogue.

Recorded capabilities preserved 20

Each option has a higher score or a lower price, with neither dimension worse under the listed workloads. It matches or beats MiniMax M1 on recorded context, maximum output, input modes, tool use and extended reasoning.

#	Model	Intelligence	$/M	Holds under
1	MiMo-V2.6-Pro Xiaomi	1491 +148.2	$0.540	Balanced −36% Summarise −33% Chat −57% Code gen −55% Agentic −64%
2	GLM 5.3 Flash Z.ai	1469.6 +126.8	$0.238	Balanced −72% Summarise −73% Chat −77% Code gen −76% Agentic −80%
3	DeepSeek V4.1 Flash DeepSeek	1462.5 +119.7	$0.182	Balanced −79% Summarise −86% Chat −78% Code gen −76% Agentic −84%
4	MiMo-V2.5-Pro Xiaomi	1465 +122.2	$0.544	Balanced −36% Summarise −32% Chat −57% Code gen −55% Agentic −64%
5	MiMo-V2.6-Flash Xiaomi	1456.4 +113.6	$0.175	Balanced −79% Summarise −78% Chat −86% Code gen −86% Agentic −88%
6	Qwen3.7 Plus Qwen	1454.6 +111.8	$0.560	Balanced −34% Summarise −40% Chat −44% Code gen −41% Agentic −53%
7	Qwen3.8 27B Qwen	1440.7 +97.9	$0.562	Balanced −34% Summarise −63% Chat −25% Code gen −17% Agentic −45%
8	DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 DeepSeek	1432.1 +89.3	$0.113	Balanced −87% Summarise −85% Chat −91% Code gen −91% Agentic −91%
9	Qwen3.6 Plus Qwen	1436.7 +93.9	$0.731	Balanced −14% Summarise −17% Chat −13% Code gen −12% Agentic −15%
10	MiniMax M3 MiniMax	1432.1 +89.3	$0.485	Balanced −43% Summarise −48% Chat −52% Code gen −49% Agentic −60%
11	GPT-5.6 Luna OpenAI	1431 +88.2	$0.450	Balanced −47% Summarise −59% Chat −51% Code gen −47% Agentic −64%
12	MiMo-V2.5 Xiaomi	1427.5 +84.7	$0.175	Balanced −79% Summarise −78% Chat −86% Code gen −86% Agentic −88%
13	Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite Google	1434.7 +91.9	$0.850	Balanced same price Summarise −32% Chat −2% Agentic −30%
14	Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview Google	1415.7 +72.9	$0.563	Balanced −34% Summarise −49% Chat −39% Code gen −34% Agentic −55%
15	Gemini 2.5 Flash Google	1417 +74.2	$0.850	Balanced same price Summarise −32% Chat −2% Agentic −30%
16	Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen	1397 +54.2	$0.114	Balanced −87% Summarise −85% Chat −87% Code gen −88% Agentic −86%
17	GPT-6 Luna OpenAI	1391.5 +48.7	$0.200	Balanced −76% Summarise −81% Chat −79% Code gen −78% Agentic −84%
18	Nova 2 Lite Amazon	1361.8 +19	$0.850	Balanced same price Summarise −16% Agentic −6%
19	GLM 5.3 Z.ai	1471.4 +128.6	$0.346 summarise	Summarise −29% Agentic −3%
20	GLM 5.2 Z.ai	1470.4 +127.6	$0.422 summarise	Summarise −14%

Alternatives with recorded capability losses 38

These improve score or price without worsening the other under the listed workloads, but reduce at least one recorded capability. Read the last column before switching.

Model	Intelligence	$/M	Holds under	Recorded capability loss
Gemma 4 31B Google	1443.4 +100.6	$0.205	Balanced −76% Summarise −69% Chat −78% Code gen −80% Agentic −73%	1M → 262K context 40K → 16K max output
Hy3 Tencent	1440.7 +97.9	$0.231	Balanced −73% Summarise −75% Chat −77% Code gen −76% Agentic −80%	1M → 262K context
Gemma 4 26B A4B Google	1433.9 +91.1	$0.127	Balanced −85% Summarise −86% Chat −87% Code gen −86% Agentic −88%	1M → 262K context
GLM 4.6 Z.ai	1439.9 +97.1	$0.760	Balanced −11% Summarise −19% Chat −24% Code gen −19% Agentic −37%	1M → 205K context 40K → 16K max output
GLM 4.7 Z.ai	1435.5 +92.7	$0.738	Balanced −13% Summarise −23% Chat −25% Code gen −20% Agentic −38%	1M → 205K context
DeepSeek V3.2 DeepSeek	1424.5 +81.7	$0.290	Balanced −66% Summarise −53% Chat −76% Code gen −78% Agentic −70%	1M → 164K context
DeepSeek V3.2 Exp DeepSeek	1422.4 +79.6	$0.305	Balanced −64% Summarise −43% Chat −71% Code gen −76% Agentic −57%	1M → 164K context
Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507 Qwen	1419.3 +76.5	$0.205	Balanced −76% Summarise −77% Chat −76% Code gen −75% Agentic −76%	1M → 262K context 40K → 16K max output no extended reasoning
Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Instruct Qwen	1420.1 +77.3	$0.370	Balanced −56% Summarise −57% Chat −60% Code gen −59% Agentic −63%	1M → 262K context 40K → 33K max output no extended reasoning
DeepSeek V3.1 DeepSeek	1419.7 +76.9	$0.453	Balanced −47% Summarise −37% Chat −50% Code gen −52% Agentic −43%	1M → 164K context 40K → 33K max output
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct Qwen	1417.3 +74.5	$0.268	Balanced −68% Summarise −73% Chat −67% Code gen −66% Agentic −70%	1M → 262K context no extended reasoning
DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus DeepSeek	1417.1 +74.3	$0.453	Balanced −47% Summarise −37% Chat −50% Code gen −52% Agentic −43%	1M → 164K context
Qwen3.5-122B-A10B Qwen	1417.1 +74.3	$0.715	Balanced −16% Summarise −28% Chat −12% Code gen −9% Agentic −20%	1M → 262K context
Qwen3 235B A22B Thinking 2507 Qwen	1415.2 +72.4	$0.748	Balanced −12% Summarise −32% Chat −6% Code gen −1% Agentic −19%	1M → 131K context
Inkling Small Thinking Machines	1413.7 +70.9	$0.638	Balanced −25% Summarise −21% Chat −42% Code gen −41% Agentic −47%	1M → 524K context
Qwen3.5-27B Qwen	1408.9 +66.1	$0.536	Balanced −37% Summarise −46% Chat −34% Code gen −31% Agentic −40%	1M → 262K context
Step 3.5 Flash StepFun	1403 +60.2	$0.150	Balanced −82% Summarise −78% Chat −84% Code gen −85% Agentic −81%	1M → 262K context
MiniMax M2.7 MiniMax	1404.6 +61.8	$0.525	Balanced −38% Summarise −44% Chat −48% Code gen −45% Agentic −56%	1M → 205K context
Qwen3.5-35B-A3B Qwen	1394.4 +51.6	$0.355	Balanced −58% Summarise −68% Chat −59% Code gen −56% Agentic −68%	1M → 262K context 40K → 33K max output
Qwen3 30B A3B Instruct 2507 Qwen	1384.1 +41.3	$0.143	Balanced −83% Summarise −79% Chat −84% Code gen −85% Agentic −82%	1M → 262K context no extended reasoning
GLM 4.5 Air Z.ai	1383.9 +41.1	$0.310	Balanced −64% Summarise −72% Chat −65% Code gen −63% Agentic −74%	1M → 131K context
Solar Pro 4 Upstage	1386.2 +43.4	$0.525	Balanced −38% Summarise −44% Chat −48% Code gen −45% Agentic −56%	1M → 524K context
GLM 4.6V Z.ai	1376.8 +34	$0.450	Balanced −47% Summarise −47% Chat −58% Code gen −57% Agentic −64%	1M → 131K context 40K → 33K max output
DeepSeek V3 0324 DeepSeek	1375 +32.2	$0.438	Balanced −49% Summarise −41% Chat −51% Code gen −53% Agentic −46%	1M → 164K context no extended reasoning
GPT-5.4 Nano OpenAI	1372.1 +29.3	$0.463	Balanced −46% Summarise −59% Chat −49% Code gen −45% Agentic −63%	1M → 400K context
GPT-5 Mini OpenAI	1373.2 +30.4	$0.688	Balanced −19% Summarise −44% Chat −21% Code gen −13% Agentic −43%	1M → 400K context
gpt-oss-120b OpenAI	1365.4 +22.6	$0.065	Balanced −92% Summarise −92% Chat −92% Code gen −92% Agentic −92%	1M → 131K context
Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Thinking Qwen	1368.3 +25.5	$0.413	Balanced −51% Summarise −59% Chat −49% Code gen −47% Agentic −54%	1M → 262K context 40K → 33K max output
Qwen3 235B A22B Qwen	1366.6 +23.8	$0.796	Balanced −6% Chat −11% Code gen −14% Agentic −2%	1M → 131K context 40K → 8K max output
Gemma 3 27B Google	1357.8 +15	$0.100	Balanced −88% Summarise −83% Chat −90% Code gen −91% Agentic −86%	1M → 131K context no extended reasoning
MiniMax M2.5 MiniMax	1359.3 +16.5	$0.521	Balanced −39% Summarise −44% Chat −48% Code gen −45% Agentic −57%	1M → 205K context
Mercury 2 Inception	1355.2 +12.4	$0.375	Balanced −56% Summarise −57% Chat −66% Code gen −64% Agentic −71%	1M → 128K context
GLM 4.7 Flash Z.ai	1350.9 tie	$0.145	Balanced −83% Summarise −87% Chat −84% Code gen −82% Agentic −88%	1M → 200K context
Kimi K2.6 Moonshot AI	1455.5 +112.7	$0.460 summarise	Summarise −6% Agentic −19%	1M → 262K context
GLM 5 Z.ai	1446.3 +103.5	$0.598 agentic	Agentic −11%	1M → 205K context
Kimi K2.5 Moonshot AI	1445.2 +102.4	$0.663 agentic	Agentic −1%	1M → 262K context
Qwen3.5 397B A17B Qwen	1438 +95.2	$0.488 summarise	Summarise −1%	1M → 262K context
GLM 4.5 Z.ai	1430.3 +87.5	$1.09 chat	Chat −2% Agentic −18%	1M → 131K context

What this compares, and what it leaves out

Quality is LMArena Elo, used under CC BY 4.0 from the official dataset. The 95% confidence interval on a difference between two scores is about ±10.47 points, so a gap smaller than that is marked tie rather than an improvement — see significance bands.
204 further models at this delivery mode carry a price but no independent score. They are absent from the comparison in both directions — unrated is not a zero, and an unmeasured model is neither an alternative nor a worse buy.
Retired models are never offered as an alternative, and a model only competes against its own delivery mode: batch trades latency for price, so it is not a like-for-like swap.
Nothing here measures latency, throughput, rate limits or how a model behaves on your prompts. Two models with the same index score are not interchangeable.
Models with no higher-scoring or cheaper alternative that is no worse on the other axis are on the value frontier. Models with such an alternative are listed here.

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