Is MiniMax M1 a good deal?
Whether anything in this catalogue beats MiniMax M1 on both quality and price, and what you give up if it does. A computation on the current catalogue, not an opinion.
12 undominated of 145 · Oct 6, 2026
As of Oct 6, 2026, MiniMax M1 is dominated for Balanced on LMArena. MiMo-V2.6-Pro scores 148.2 higher and costs 36% less, with a covering envelope. 12 of 145 rated, priced standard models are undominated.
Inspect model evidence Compare differences & requirements
MiMo-V2.6-Pro is both better and cheaper than MiniMax M1: 148.2 points higher on LMArena and 36% less per million tokens, $0.310 cheaper at this mix.
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1342.8
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.850/M
LMArena Elo · higher is better
Scale starts at 1040 Elo
1491.0
Effective $/M · Balanced · lower is better
$0.540/M
MiniMax M1 takes text, returns up to 40,000 tokens from a 1,000,000-token context, and is listed by 2 sellers.
Compared against 145 rated, priced models on this lens: 18 models dominate it and give up nothing, 5 more dominate it but give something up. MiniMax M1 scores 1342.8 at $0.850 per million tokens for this mix.
Envelope-safe replacements
Each row scores at least as high, costs no more, and covers this model’s context, output, modalities, tools, and reasoning. A cheaper narrower model is not listed here.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You save |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiMo-V2.6-Pro | 1491.0 +148.2 | $0.540/M | 36% |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 1469.6 +126.8 | $0.238/M | 72% |
| MiMo-V2.5-Pro | 1465.0 +122.2 | $0.544/M | 36% |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | 1462.5 +119.7 | $0.182/M | 79% |
| MiMo-V2.6-Flash | 1456.4 +113.6 | $0.175/M | 79% |
| Qwen3.7 Plus | 1454.6 +111.8 | $0.560/M | 34% |
| Qwen3.8 27B | 1440.7 +97.9 | $0.562/M | 34% |
| Qwen3.6 Plus | 1436.7 +93.9 | $0.731/M | 14% |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | 1434.7 +91.9 | $0.850/M | 0% |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash 0423 | 1432.1 +89.3 | $0.113/M | 87% |
| MiniMax M3 | 1432.1 +89.3 | $0.485/M | 43% |
| GPT-5.6 Luna | 1431.0 +88.2 | $0.450/M | 47% |
| MiMo-V2.5 | 1427.5 +84.7 | $0.175/M | 79% |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 1417.0 +74.2 | $0.850/M | 0% |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Preview | 1415.7 +72.9 | $0.563/M | 34% |
| Qwen3.5-Flash | 1397.0 +54.2 | $0.114/M | 87% |
| GPT-6 Luna | 1391.5 +48.7 | $0.200/M | 76% |
| Nova 2 Lite | 1361.8 +19.0 | $0.850/M | 0% |
Higher score, lower price, named losses
Not a drop-in. The loss is why these are not a recommendation.
| Model | LMArena | Effective $/M | You give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemma 4 31B | 1443.4 | $0.205/M | context, max output |
| Hy3 | 1440.7 | $0.231/M | context |
| GLM 4.6 | 1439.9 | $0.760/M | context, max output |
| GLM 4.7 | 1435.5 | $0.738/M | context |
| Gemma 4 26B A4B | 1433.9 | $0.127/M | context |
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Saved decision references
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Constraint: replacements must preserve the model’s capabilities; any losses remain named trade-offs.
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