Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

Claude Opus 5.5 vs MiniMax M2.1

Claude Opus 5.5
Anthropic · Frontier · Proprietary
$8.80/1M · 1M 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
Opus 5.5
MiniMax M2.1
Maker
Anthropic
MiniMax
Blended price / 1M
$8.80
$0.57
Input / output
$4.00 in · $20 out / 1M tokens
$0.30 in · $1.20 out / 1M tokens
Context window
1M
205K
Open weights
No
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
10.0
7.8
Agentic Ability
10.0
8.1
Speed
7.6
8.0
Value for money
7.4
9.5
Reliability
9.5
8.3

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

Verdict: Opus 5.5 or MiniMax M2.1?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose Claude Opus 5.5 if you want the hardest coding and agent work, as the default flagship instead of Fable. Choose MiniMax M2.1 if you want tool-heavy personal and autonomous agents on a budget.

In our editorial scoring, Claude Opus 5.5 leads in 3 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability and reliability), while MiniMax M2.1 leads in 2. On price, Claude Opus 5.5 runs about $8.80 per 1M tokens (blended) and is proprietary; MiniMax M2.1 is about $0.57 and open-weight.

Where Opus 5.5 falls short
  • Twice Sonnet 5.5's price per token for a small measured gain
  • Released September 2026, so its long-run track record is still short
Full Opus 5.5 breakdown →
Where MiniMax M2.1 falls short
  • Shorter context than M3
  • Behind frontier on quality
Full MiniMax M2.1 breakdown →

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Current frontier models Claude Opus 5.5 · Claude Sonnet 5.5

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