Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Beam 1.0 vs MiniMax M3

Beam 1.0
Reflection · Balanced · Open weights
$1.60/1M · 1.0M ctx
MiniMax M3
MiniMax · Balanced · Open weights
$0.57/1M · 1.0M 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 M3
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
1.0M
Open weights
Yes
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
7.0
6.3
Agentic Ability
5.0
5.0
Speed
7.0
8.1
Value for Money
5.7
6.8
Reliability
8.0
8.4

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

Verdict: Beam 1.0 or MiniMax M3?

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 M3 if you want agents that need an open-weight model with a 1M context.

In our editorial scoring, MiniMax M3 leads in 3 of five dimensions (speed, value for money and reliability), while Beam 1.0 leads in 1. On price, Beam 1.0 runs about $1.60 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; MiniMax M3 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 M3 falls short
  • Weak on long agentic tasks (2.0% in Artificial Analysis's Terminal-Bench 4.0 run)
  • DeepSeek V4.1 Flash scores higher for about half the cost per request
Full MiniMax M3 breakdown →

Setting it up? MiniMax M3: model ID, providers and agent config

The agent matters as much as the model. Compare AI agents →

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