Model Comparison 2026

Claude Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax M3

Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary
$11/1M · 1M ctx
MiniMax M3
MiniMax · Balanced · Open weights
$0.57/1M · 1.0M ctx

Community Vote

Pick a winner in each dimension — change your vote anytime.

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 $
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results — fewer refusals, loops, and format breaks

Specs & Pricing, Side by Side

Spec
Opus 4.8
MiniMax M3
Maker
Anthropic
MiniMax
Blended price / 1M
$11
$0.57
Input / output
$5.00 in · $25 out / 1M tokens
$0.30 in · $1.20 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
1.0M
Open weights
No
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
9.6
8.4
Agentic Ability
9.6
8.7
Speed
7.2
7.8
Value for $
7.5
9.1
Reliability
9.5
8.6

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

Verdict: Opus 4.8 or MiniMax M3?

Updated 2026-06-22

Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if you want hard, high-stakes coding and reasoning where quality matters more than cost. Choose MiniMax M3 if you want open-weight autonomous agents that lean on tool use.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Opus 4.8 leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while MiniMax M3 leads in 2. On price, Claude Opus 4.8 runs about $11 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; MiniMax M3 is about $0.57 and open-weight.

Where Opus 4.8 falls short
  • Among the most expensive models per token
  • Slower than lighter models on simple tasks
Full Opus 4.8 breakdown →
Where MiniMax M3 falls short
  • Below frontier on raw quality
  • Newer, less battle-tested than V3.2/GLM
Full MiniMax M3 breakdown →

The model is half the story — the agent is the other half

The model picks the moves; the agent runs the loop, the tools, and the guardrails. Once you've chosen a model, see which agent gets the most out of it.

Compare AI agents →

Related comparisons

Opus 4.8 vs GPT-5.5Opus 4.8 vs Gemini 3.1 ProOpus 4.8 vs GLM 5.2Opus 4.8 vs Qwen3.7 MaxOpus 4.8 vs DeepSeek V4 ProOpus 4.8 vs Kimi K2.6Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.3Opus 4.8 vs Grok 4.20