Standard Compute
Model comparison 2026

MiniMax M2.1 vs Step 5 Preview

MiniMax M2.1
MiniMax · Balanced · Open weights
$0.57/1M · 205K ctx
Step 5 Preview
StepFun · Balanced · Proprietary
$1.51/1M · 1M 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
MiniMax M2.1
Step 5
Maker
MiniMax
StepFun
Blended price / 1M
$0.57
$1.51
Input / output
$0.30 in · $1.20 out / 1M tokens
$1.00 in · $2.70 out / 1M tokens
Context window
205K
1M
Open weights
Yes
No
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
5.1
8.2
Agentic Ability
4.7
7.6
Speed
6.9
7.5
Value for money
7.2
7.1
Reliability
8.3
8.6

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

Verdict: MiniMax M2.1 or Step 5?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose MiniMax M2.1 if you want short, tool-heavy agent steps on a tight budget. Choose Step 5 Preview if you want mid-priced agent loops that want more capability than a Flash-class model.

In our editorial scoring, Step 5 Preview leads in 4 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed and reliability), while MiniMax M2.1 leads in 1. On price, MiniMax M2.1 runs about $0.57 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Step 5 Preview is about $1.51 and proprietary.

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  • Superseded by MiniMax M3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 →
Where Step 5 falls short
  • Still a preview, so behavior and price can change
  • Only StepFun serves it on OpenRouter, so there is no provider fallback
Full Step 5 breakdown →

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