vs
1:10
overall capability wins (0 ties across 11 scored). MiniMax M3 leads overall.
- Reasoning1:5
- Coding0:3
- Tool use0:1
- Composite indices0:2
- Pricing3:0
- Specs0:1
Verdict
MiniMax M3 leads coding (widest gap: +320.1 on WebDev Elo); MiniMax M3 offers ~7.8x larger context (1M vs 128K); MiniMax M3 ships open weights (MiniMax Community).
- MiniMax M3 leads coding (widest gap: +320.1 on WebDev Elo)
- MiniMax M3 offers ~7.8x larger context (1M vs 128K)
- MiniMax M3 ships open weights (MiniMax Community)
- Mercury 2 is ~1.4x cheaper on a blended token basis than MiniMax M3
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Mercury 2
- $0.44
- MiniMax M3
- $0.60
Mercury 2 is about 1.4x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Inception Labs
MiniMax
Family
Other
Other
License
Proprietary
MiniMax Community
Open weights
No
Yes
Release
Sep 1, 2026
Jun 1, 2026
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Inception Labs
MiniMax
Modalities
text → text
text, image, video → text
Specs
Context window
128K
1M
Max output
-
128K
Parameters
—
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$0.25
$0.30
Output $/1M
$0.75
$1.20
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$0.38
$0.52
Speed
tok/s
-
80
TTFT (s)
-
0.35
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
—
—
GPQA Diamond
77.0
92.9
Humanity's Last Exam
17.1
39.0
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
—
—
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
21.2
16.7
AA-LCR v1.1
43.7
83.0
CritPt
0.8
3.7
MMMU-Pro
—
78.6
IFBench
69.8
82.9
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
—
—
SWE-bench Pro
—
59.0
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
—
LiveCodeBench
—
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
27.3
65.2
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
37.7
47.1
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
46.4
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
1,167
1,487
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
1,441
| Metric | Mercury 2 | MiniMax M3 | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Inception Labs | MiniMax | — |
| Family | Other | Other | — |
| License | Proprietary | MiniMax Community | — |
| Open weights | No | Yes | — |
| Release | Sep 1, 2026 | Jun 1, 2026 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Inception Labs | MiniMax | — |
| Modalities | text → text | text, image, video → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 128K | 1M | B +872K |
| Max output | - | 128K | — |
| Parameters | — | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $0.25 | $0.30 | A +$0.05 |
| Output $/1M | $0.75 | $1.20 | A +$0.45 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $0.38 | $0.52 | A +$0.15 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | - | 80 | — |
| TTFT (s) | - | 0.35 | — |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | — | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 77.0 | 92.9 | B +15.9 pts |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 17.1 | 39.0 | B +21.9 pts |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | — | — | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | 21.2 | 16.7 | A +4.5 pts |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | 43.7 | 83.0 | B +39.3 pts |
| CritPt | 0.8 | 3.7 | B +2.9 pts |
| MMMU-Pro | — | 78.6 | — |
| IFBench | 69.8 | 82.9 | B +13.1 pts |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | 59.0 | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | — | — |
| LiveCodeBench | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 27.3 | 65.2 | B +37.9 pts |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | 37.7 | 47.1 | B +9.4 pts |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | 46.4 | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | 1,167 | 1,487 | B +320 Elo |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | 1,441 | — |
Mercury 2
- Context
- 128K
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.25 / $0.75
- Speed
- —
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Inception Labs' diffusion-based (non-autoregressive) reasoning LLM, API-only with a 128K context window and high-throughput inference on Blackwell GPUs.
MiniMax M3
- Context
- 1M / 128K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.30 / $1.20
- Speed
- 80 tok/s · 0.35s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image, video → text
- License
- MiniMax Community
MiniMax June 2026 open-weight flagship — frontier coding/agentic scores with MSA 1M context and native multimodality.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.