Ember-1 vs MiniMax M3
Ember-1 leads MiniMax M3 on coding, 52.6 to 39.2 on the Vibe Coding Index, and MiniMax M3 costs 12.5x less per output token ($1.20 vs $15.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 9 benchmarks have a result for both.
vs boards won of 9 shared
Ember-1 or MiniMax M3: which to pick
Pick Ember-1 for coding: it scores 52.6 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.2 for MiniMax M3, though on 2 benchmarks against 6.
Pick MiniMax M3 for output tokens 12.5x cheaper ($1.20 vs $15.00 per million).
Model AEmber-1Fireworks52.6/1002 independent benchmarksNo cost per solved taskModel BMiniMax M3MiniMax39.2/1006 independent benchmarks$0.56 per solved task
- Shared results
- 9
- Ember-1 only
- 5
- MiniMax M3 only
- 108
- Like-for-like categories
- 3 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
Ember-1
Ember-1 scores 52.6 against 39.2.
2 and 6 benchmarks behind the scores
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only MiniMax M3 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 29.2.
Directional only
Agentic work
AA Agentic Index
No call
Only MiniMax M3 has a AA Agentic Index result, 29.5.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only MiniMax M3 has a GPQA Diamond result, 92.7%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only MiniMax M3 has a MMLU Pro result, 84.2%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only MiniMax M3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1257.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
No call
Both take 1.05M tokens.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
MiniMax M3
Ember-1 $0.011, MiniMax M3 $0.0009 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only MiniMax M3 has the number, $0.56.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Ember-1 52.6 from 2 benchmarks, MiniMax M3 39.2 from 6 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Coding, 19.9 points apart on average over 4 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI): Ember-1 83.9% against MiniMax M3 47.6%, 36.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Ember-1 $15.00 against MiniMax M3 $1.20 per million output tokens, 12.5x apart.
- Context window
- Both take 1.05M tokens.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Ember-1 | Bars | MiniMax M3 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 4 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 4 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 9 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index40
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench coding | Not measured | 70.9% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev | Not measured | 1482 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 58.6 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 82.2% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 75.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 4 (Vals AI) | 20.7% | 1.0% | Ember-1 |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | 83.9% | 47.6% | Ember-1 |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | 32.5% | 19.9% | Ember-1 |
| IOI (Vals AI) | 46.3% | Not measured | Only Ember-1 measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 53.6% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal (Vals AI) | Not measured | 33.3% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Vibe Code Bench 1-100 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 9.2% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| SkillsBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 51.5% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| CyberBench (Vals AI) | 69.5% | 65.0% | Ember-1 |
| SciCode | Not measured | 47.1% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 42.4% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| FrontierCode | Not measured | 14.7% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| ALE-Bench | Not measured | 640.0 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1470 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1466 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | Not measured | 1478 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | Not measured | 1455 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | Not measured | 1470 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 20 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 29.2 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 146.9 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index40
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Agentic Index | Not measured | 29.5 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building web apps | Not measured | 1200 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building full-stack apps | Not measured | 1197 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building mobile apps | Not measured | 1169 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building Android apps | Not measured | 1158 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: agents building games | Not measured | 1159 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: HTML slides | Not measured | 1120 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: PowerPoint slides | Not measured | 1178 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: spreadsheets | Not measured | 1042 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LiveBench research | Not measured | 68.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LiveBench browser | Not measured | 8.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LiveBench long agentic | Not measured | 12.4% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | 51.8% | 48.3% | Ember-1 |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | 31.1% | 20.6% | Ember-1 |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | 44.7% | 29.8% | Ember-1 |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | 63.4% | 47.8% | Ember-1 |
| BioMysteryBench (Vals AI) | 67.0% | Not measured | Only Ember-1 measured |
| Terminal-Bench-Science (Vals AI) | 5.7% | Not measured | Only Ember-1 measured |
| Vals Science Index | 31.8% | Not measured | Only Ember-1 measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 88.9% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| APEX-Agents | Not measured | 37.7% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Not measured | 4.6% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Not measured | $2,158 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 19 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index15 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 92.7% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LiveBench reasoning | Not measured | 74.5% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| MysteryMechanism (Vals AI) | 22.5% | Not measured | Only Ember-1 measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 81.2% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 92.9% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 39.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | Not measured | 90.9% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 45.8% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 13.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 8.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1447 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1461 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1455 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | Not measured | 1266 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | Not measured | 1268 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index4 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME | Not measured | 71.1% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| ProofBench | Not measured | 18.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1429 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1448 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 84.2% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 85.4% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.1% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 72.7% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.4% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 46.3% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1452 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1441 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1437 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1434 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 10 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index9 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | Not measured | 1257 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | Not measured | 1243 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | Not measured | 1210 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | Not measured | 1236 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | Not measured | 1208 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | Not measured | 1246 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: SVG | Not measured | 1160 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | Not measured | 1161 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LiveBench design | Not measured | 66.2% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveBench data analysis | Not measured | 76.2% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Public Benefits Bench (Vals AI) | 66.2% | 64.1% | Ember-1 |
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 50.6% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 87.3% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 60.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| IFBench | Not measured | 82.9% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | Not measured | 83.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| DTBench | Not measured | 78.9% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 33.7% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Surface Evolver Bench | Not measured | 55.0% | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1433 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1433 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1404 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision | Not measured | 1251 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1443 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1420 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1466 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1428 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1380 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1373 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1444 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1433 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1426 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1423 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1443 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1446 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1419 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1403 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | Not measured | 1263 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | Not measured | 1311 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | Not measured | 1259 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | Not measured | 1235 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | Not measured | 1197 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | Not measured | 1234 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| LMArena Document | Not measured | 1435 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| EQ-Bench 4 | Not measured | 1150 | Only MiniMax M3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Ember-1$0.011Fits in one request
MiniMax M3$0.0009Fits in one request
MiniMax M3 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Ember-1$0.195Fits in one request
MiniMax M3$0.019Fits in one request
MiniMax M3 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Ember-1$0.750Fits in one request
MiniMax M3$0.072Fits in one request
MiniMax M3 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Fireworks Ember-1 | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Fireworks | MiniMax |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | September 24, 2026 | May 31, 2026 |
| Context window | 1.05M | 1.05M |
| Input $/Mtok | $3.00 | $0.30 |
| Output $/Mtok | $15.00 | $1.20 |
| Coding index | 52.6 | 39.2 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 2 | 6 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $0.56 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Ember-1 better than MiniMax M3 for coding?
Pick Ember-1 for coding: it scores 52.6 on the Vibe Coding Index against 39.2 for MiniMax M3, though on 2 benchmarks against 6. Pick MiniMax M3 for output tokens 12.5x cheaper ($1.20 vs $15.00 per million).
Which is cheaper, Ember-1 or MiniMax M3?
Ember-1 costs $3.00 per million input tokens and $15.00 per million output tokens; MiniMax M3 costs $0.30 and $1.20. Cost per solved task is known for MiniMax M3 only.
Which has the bigger context window, Ember-1 or MiniMax M3?
Neither: both take 1.05M tokens.
How many benchmarks is the Ember-1 vs MiniMax M3 comparison based on?
9 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Ember-1's coding index rests on 2 independent benchmarks and MiniMax M3's on 6. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.