MiniMax-M3 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash
Side-by-side comparison of API pricing, specs, benchmarks, and capabilities
| Specification |
by MiniMax
3 providers:
Fireworks $0.300/$1.20
MiniMax $0.300/$1.20
Together $0.300/$1.20
|
by Google
|
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Status | Current budget Open weights | Deprecated budget |
| Released | Jun 1, 2026 | Jun 17, 2025 |
| Pricing per million tokens | ||
| Input | $0.300/Mtok | $0.300/Mtok |
| Output | $1.20/Mtok | $2.50/Mtok |
| Blended avg | $0.525/Mtok | $0.850/Mtok |
| Cached input | $0.060/Mtok | — |
| Specifications | ||
| Context window | 1M tokens | 1M tokens |
| Parameters | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Speed (TPS) | — | — |
| Modalities | ||
| Input |
textimagevideo
|
textimageaudiovideo
|
| Benchmarks source: Vellum LLM Leaderboard | ||
| Avg benchmark score | 63.1 | 50.2 |
| Perf / dollar | 120.2 | 59.1 |
| GPQA Diamond | 93 | 78.3 |
| SWE-Bench Verified | 45 | 38 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 66 | 16.9 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 22 | 12.1 |
| ARC-AGI 2 | 20 | 15 |
| AIME 2025 | 55 | 78 |
| MMMLU | 76 | 78 |
| MATH 500 | 70 | 72 |
| LiveCodeBench | — | 63.5 |
| MCP Atlas | 74.2 | — |
| BrowseComp | 83.5 | — |
| OSWorld-Verified | 70.1 | — |
| BFCL | 65 | — |
| HumanEval | 80.5 | — |
| Independent composite scores each on its own scale — not part of the average above | ||
| LMSYS Chatbot Arena | 1442 ELO | 1409.8 ELO |
| AA Intelligence Index | 45.4 | — |
| AA Agentic Index | 36.1 | — |
| AA-Omniscience Index (−100–100) | 1.4 | — |
| GDPval-AA v2 | 1380.2 ELO | — |
| Providers | ||
| Available from |
Fireworks — $0.300/$1.20/Mtok
MiniMax — $0.300/$1.20/Mtok
Together — $0.300/$1.20/Mtok
|
Google — $0.300/$2.50/Mtok
|
Cost at scale
1M tokens · 50/50 input/output| Volume | MiniMax-M3 | Gemini 2.5 Flash | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M tokens | $0.52 | $0.85 | $0.33 (38.8%) |
| 10M tokens | $5.25 | $8.5 | $3.25 (38.2%) |
| 100M tokens | $52.5 | $85 | $32.5 (38.2%) |
| 1000M tokens | $525 | $850 | $325 (38.2%) |
When to pick which
distilled from the pricing and spec data above- cost dominates: $0.525/Mtok blended vs $0.850 — 38.2% less on the same 50/50 token mix
- your workload re-reads context (agents, RAG, long chats): cached input costs $0.060/Mtok — 80% off its list input price, a discount Gemini 2.5 Flash doesn't offer
- raw capability matters more than price: 63.1 vs 50.2 average benchmark score
- you want open weights — self-host it, fine-tune it, or exit the API entirely; Gemini 2.5 Flash is closed
- provider flexibility: available from 3 providers, so you can price-shop hosts or fail over
- this pairing gives Gemini 2.5 Flash no edge on price, context, cache discount, or measured performance — pick it only for qualitative fit (ecosystem, compliance, model behavior on your prompts)
Price movement
recorded changes since we began tracking each model · last checked Aug 28, 2026| Model | Changes | Latest move | Old → new $/M |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax-M3 | 1 | price cut on Jun 17, 2026 | $0.6/$2.4 → $0.3/$1.2/Mtok |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | 2 | price rise on Jul 4, 2026 | $0.075/$0.3 → $0.3/$2.5/Mtok |
The cheaper option here — MiniMax-M3 costs $0.525/Mtok blended on MiniMax.
Summary
MiniMax-M3 by MiniMax costs $0.300/Mtok input and $1.20/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image, video input and is available from 3 providers.
Gemini 2.5 Flash by Google costs $0.300/Mtok input and $2.50/Mtok output, with a 1M-token context window. It supports text, image, audio, video input.
On a blended cost basis, MiniMax-M3 is 38.2% cheaper than Gemini 2.5 Flash.
On benchmarks, MiniMax-M3 scores higher (63.1 vs 50.2) on average. In terms of value, MiniMax-M3 has better performance per dollar (120.2 vs 59.1).
Note: Pricing is per million tokens. Actual costs vary with usage patterns, prompt caching, and batch discounts. Always verify against official provider pricing pages.