MiniMax M3
MiniMax · released Jun 2, 2026 · MiniMaxAI/Minimax-M3
- Type
- Open weightsCustom licence
- Params
- 427B
- Context
- 1M
about 786K words of context · download allowed, licence restricts use
Our take
Written Aug 2, 2026MiniMax M3 is a large multimodal model whose weights can be downloaded. It accepts text, images and video, and scores well on the independent chat leaderboard we track for its price. It is a quality-per-dollar pick rather than a pure peak-quality one.
Choose this for high-volume chat or retrieval workloads where quality per dollar beats peak quality, or for multimodal image and video input at downloadable-model prices. Skip it if the restricted licence poses legal risk, or if you need frontier-level chat quality.
The case for it
- High measured chat score for the price: frontier models above it cost several times more.
- Video input at commodity pricing, with text and image input too.
The case against it
- Custom restricted licence; check terms before fine-tuning or redistribution.
- Trails the frontier on measured chat quality.
How good is it?
IntelligencePuzzles, maths, exam questions
Arena Text (overall)40th of 143 · 1445.3
CodingWriting and fixing code on its own
Arena Coding37th of 143 · 1497.8
AgenticPlanning, calling tools, staying on task
Arena Agent (IPS)28th of 36 · −0.025
WritingWe do not rate this
Two boards come close and neither tests writing: Arena Creative Writing asks people which of two replies they prefer, and LiveBench Language tests whether a model understood a passage. So we show where MiniMax M3 placed and give it no mark out of five.
These tests check whether a model follows instructions — a precondition for all the work above, but not a measure of how well that work is done, which is why they get no rating.
Every published score for this model16 scoresEvery figure we hold, from 16 boards, with who ran it and a link to the source — including the boards no rating above is built on.
Can you run it yourself?
- Fits in memory
- weights load entirely on the card
- Spills to system RAM
- some weights offload; much slower
- Too large
- will not load even with offload
- est
- size is calculated; the verdict could change by 10%
GeForce RTX 4090 · 24 GB
Too large for this card. The weights do not fit even with part of them offloaded to system memory.
Apple M1 Pro (16-core GPU) · 32 GB
Too large for this card. The weights do not fit even with part of them offloaded to system memory.
Comfortable fit
Apple M3 Ultra (80-core GPU) · 512 GB
Room to spare. 105.3 GB spare means a 10% error in the size would not change the answer.
Memory use by level
Against a 24 GB card.
All 3 sizes here are calculated, not measured. We hold no measured file for this model, so each size comes from the parameter count and every verdict above inherits that uncertainty.
Check against your own machine → · All 71 devices, with every size →
Or rent it from someone else
Cheapest of 12 live listings. Picked at the widest standard context we hold, within one quantisation slice, so the numbers beside it are a price one host actually charges.
- per 1M tokens
- $0.30 in / $1.20 out
- Context served
- 1M
- Throughput
- Not measured
| Provider | In / out per 1M tokens | Context | Throughput | Trains on prompts | Logs prompts | Zero retention |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GMICloudfp8 | $0.24 / $0.96 | 1M | 46 tok/s | No | Yesunknown period | Unknown |
| DeepInfrafp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 524K | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| DeepInfrafp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 524K | 20 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| Novita AI | $0.30 / $1.20 | 1M | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Novita AIfp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 1M | 54 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| Morph | $0.30 / $1.20 | 256K | 28 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| Together AI | $0.30 / $1.20 | 524K | 45 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| Venice AIfp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 524K | 105 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| AtlasCloudfp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 524K | 63 tok/s | No | Yesunknown period | Unknown |
| Parasailfp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 1M | 56 tok/s | No | No | Confirmed |
| OpenRouter | $0.30 / $1.20 | 1M | not measured | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Minimaxfp8 | $0.30 / $1.20 | 524K | 78 tok/s | No | Yesunknown period | Unknown |
DeepInfra
Novita AI
Morph
Together AIAcross the 12 listings we hold: 9 say they do not train on prompts, 0 say they do and 3 do not say. 6 appear in the zero-retention registry we check; the rest are unknown to us rather than confirmed either way.
What each host's API supports
From the parameter list each endpoint publishes. Streaming is omitted: nothing we hold reports it, for any model.
- ✓
- Supported
- ✗
- Not supported
- Not published
- host gave no parameter list
| Provider | Tool calling | JSON output | Strict schema |
|---|---|---|---|
| GMICloudfp8 | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| DeepInfrafp8 | |||
| DeepInfrafp8 | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Novita AI | |||
| Novita AIfp8 | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Morph | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Together AI | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Venice AIfp8 | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| AtlasCloudfp8 | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Parasailfp8 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| OpenRouter | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Minimaxfp8 | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
Tool calling: 9 of 12 listings say yes, 1 says no, 2 publish no parameter list. JSON output: 6 of 12 listings say yes, 4 say no, 2 publish no parameter list. Strict schema: 4 of 12 listings say yes, 6 say no, 2 publish no parameter list.
Models people weigh against MiniMax M3
When we formed this view
Dates behind this page
Prices last checked 3d ago
What we do not know about this model yet
- We hold no measured file for it, so all 3 sizes on this page are calculated from the parameter count.
- 2 of 12 listings publish no parameter list, so what their API accepts is unknown to us.
- Nothing we hold says whether an endpoint streams, so we do not show it either way.
- 3 of 12 listings do not say whether they train on prompts.
Licence and identifiers
What the licence allowsCustom licence, what it allows commercially, and the identifiers you need to pull this model — its Hugging Face repo, our slug and a machine-readable card.
Licence
Custom licence
This model ships custom license terms that don't map to a known template. We haven't parsed them, so commercial use, redistribution and derivatives are unverified — review the original terms before shipping.
Identifiers
- Hugging Face
- MiniMaxAI/Minimax-M3
- Architecture
- Mixture of experts
- Modality record
- text+image+video->text
- Catalogue slug
- minimax-minimax-m3