Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax M2
Benchmarks, API pricing and specs, head to head. Data updated 2026-06-10.
Anthropic · Sep 2025
The model that made 30-hour autonomous coding sessions real — 77.2% SWE-bench Verified and a 1M-token context beta at $3/$15.
MiniMax · Oct 2025
A 10B-active MoE tuned purely for agents and code — striking capability-per-active-parameter at rock-bottom prices.
The verdict
Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 3 of the 3 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for MiniMax M2. On price the gap is dramatic: MiniMax M2 works out roughly 11x cheaper per blended million tokens. MiniMax M2 also takes 205K of context versus 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.5. And MiniMax M2 is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
Benchmark head-to-head 3–0
Specs & pricing
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | MiniMax M2 | |
|---|---|---|
| modhub Index | 65.5 | 68.9 |
| Input price / 1M | $3 | $0.3 |
| Output price / 1M | $15 | $1.2 |
| Context window | 200K | 205K |
| Max output | 64K | — |
| Open weights | no | yes (MIT) |
| Reasoning model | yes | yes |
| Multimodal input | text, image | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jan 2025 | Jun 2025 |
| Released | Sep 2025 | Oct 2025 |
| Example monthly cost* | $52.50 | $4.80 |
* 10M input + 1.5M output tokens per month at list prices, no caching. Green = better value on that row.
Frequently asked questions
- Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax M2?
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 3 of the 3 benchmarks these models share, against 0 for MiniMax M2. On price the gap is dramatic: MiniMax M2 works out roughly 11x cheaper per blended million tokens. MiniMax M2 also takes 205K of context versus 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.5. And MiniMax M2 is open-weights (MIT), so it can be self-hosted — a structural advantage if data control or vendor independence matters.
- Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax M2?
- Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $3/$15 per million input/output tokens, while MiniMax M2 costs $0.3/$1.2. For a typical workload of 10M input and 1.5M output tokens per month, that's $52.50 versus $4.80.
- Which model is better for coding, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax M2?
- On SWE-bench Verified — the standard agentic-coding benchmark — Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores 77.2% versus 69.4% for MiniMax M2, making Claude Sonnet 4.5 the stronger pick for coding agents.