Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Beam 1.0 vs MiniMax M2.1

Beam 1.0
Reflection · Balanced · Open weights
$1.60/1M · 1.0M ctx
MiniMax M2.1
MiniMax · Balanced · Open weights
$0.57/1M · 205K ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality

Correctness and depth of what it produces

Agentic Ability

Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks

Speed

Tokens per second and time-to-first-token

Value for Money

How much capability you get per dollar

Reliability

Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
Beam 1.0
MiniMax M2.1
Maker
Reflection
MiniMax
Blended price / 1M
$1.60
$0.57
Input / output
$1.00 in · $3.00 out / 1M tokens
$0.30 in · $1.20 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1.0M
205K
Open weights
Yes
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
7.0
5.1
Agentic Ability
5.0
4.7
Speed
7.0
6.9
Value for Money
5.7
7.2
Reliability
8.0
8.3

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: Beam 1.0 or MiniMax M2.1?

Updated 2026-10-17

Choose Beam 1.0 if you want trying a permissively licensed open-weight coding model through OpenRouter, or self-hosting it where code must stay on your own hardware. Choose MiniMax M2.1 if you want short, tool-heavy agent steps on a tight budget.

In our editorial scoring, Beam 1.0 leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and speed), while MiniMax M2.1 leads in 2. On price, Beam 1.0 runs about $1.60 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; MiniMax M2.1 is about $0.57 and open-weight.

Where Beam 1.0 falls short
  • Every published benchmark figure is Reflection's own so far
  • Text only: no image input
Full Beam 1.0 breakdown →
Where MiniMax M2.1 falls short
  • 204K context, smaller than 19.7% of the coding-agent requests we measured
  • Superseded by MiniMax M3
Full MiniMax M2.1 breakdown →

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