OpenAI o3-mini vs MiniMax-M1

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

OpenAI o3-mini

OpenAI

Affordable reasoning model for coding tasks. Best price-performance for algorithm-heavy work.

Input$1.10/M
Output$4.40/M
Context200K tokens
Best ForAlgorithm design, coding challenges, debugging
Benchmark80/100

MiniMax-M1

MiniMax

MiniMax's flagship model. Strong performance in Chinese and English with competitive pricing.

Input$0.150/M
Output$0.600/M
Context4M tokens
Best ForChat applications, Chinese-English tasks, creative writing

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioOpenAI o3-miniMiniMax-M1Savings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.17 $0.02 MiniMax-M1 saves $0.15 (86%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $1.27 $0.17 MiniMax-M1 saves $1.09 (86%)
Large Project (50K lines) $6.33 $0.86 MiniMax-M1 saves $5.46 (86%)
Code Review (5K lines) $0.30 $0.04 MiniMax-M1 saves $0.26 (86%)

Verdict

MiniMax-M1 wins on both price and performance — $0.150/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models