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Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs MiniMax M2.5
A detailed comparison of Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) and MiniMax M2.5 (MiniMax) across pricing, performance, and features.
Pricing Comparison
| Metric | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M2.5 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M tokens | $3.00 | $0.30 | -90% |
| Output / 1M tokens | $15.00 | $1.20 | -92% |
| Context window | 200K | 200K | — |
| Max output | 16K | 128K | — |
Benchmark Comparison
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 86% | 82% |
| HumanEval | 94% | 90% |
| GPQA | 70% | — |
Capabilities
| Capability | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | MiniMax M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| code | ✓ | ✓ |
| reasoning | ✓ | ✓ |
| text | ✓ | ✓ |
| tool-use | ✓ | ✗ |
| vision | ✓ | ✗ |
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Strengths
- ✓Opus 4.5 quality at 1/5th the cost
- ✓Best value for production workloads
- ✓1M context in beta
Claude Sonnet 4.6 Weaknesses
- ✗Long context pricing doubles above 200K
- ✗Slightly below Opus 4.6 on hardest tasks
MiniMax M2.5 Strengths
- ✓Frontier quality at budget pricing ($0.30/$1.20)
- ✓80.2% SWE-Bench Verified — among the best
- ✓Open-source (MIT) with 10B active params — easy to run
MiniMax M2.5 Weaknesses
- ✗Text-only — no vision or audio
- ✗No tool-use support
- ✗Newer provider — smaller ecosystem
Quick Verdict
Best value: MiniMax M2.5 is the more affordable option at $0.3/$1.2 per 1M tokens.
Higher benchmarks: MiniMax M2.5 scores higher on average across available benchmarks (86.0% avg).
Choose MiniMax M2.5 if cost matters most. Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need the best possible quality for complex tasks.