GPT-5 vs MiniMax M2.1

GPT-5 leads MiniMax M2.1 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, 23.0 to 20.9, and MiniMax M2.1 costs 8.3x less per output token ($1.20 vs $10.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 34 benchmarks have a result for both.

Replace GPT-5 Replace MiniMax M2.1

GPT-5OpenAI

Coding: 38.8
Overall: 51.5
Output $/M: $10.00

MiniMax M2.1MiniMax

Coding: No data
Overall: No data
Output $/M: $1.20

vs boards won of 34 shared

GPT-5 or MiniMax M2.1: which to pick

Only GPT-5 has a coding score, 38.8 on the Vibe Coding Index; MiniMax M2.1 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.

Pick MiniMax M2.1 for output tokens 8.3x cheaper ($1.20 vs $10.00 per million) and work measured by SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) or MMLU Pro, where it leads.

Model AGPT-5OpenAI38.8/1003 independent benchmarks$0.39 per solved task Model BMiniMax M2.1MiniMaxNot benchmarked1 independent benchmark$0.59 per solved task

3479

Shared results: 34
GPT-5 only: 79
MiniMax M2.1 only: 0
Like-for-like categories: 8 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
No call
Only GPT-5 has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
GPT-5
GPT-5 leads, 23.0 against 20.9.
Same board, both measured
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
GPT-5
GPT-5 leads, 85.6% against 78.5%.
Same board, both measured
Math
AIME
GPT-5
GPT-5 leads, 93.4% against 77.9%.
Same board, both measured
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
MiniMax M2.1
MiniMax M2.1 leads, 87.0% against 86.5%.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
MiniMax M2.1
MiniMax M2.1 leads, 1201 against 1184.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
GPT-5
GPT-5 takes 400K tokens against 205K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
MiniMax M2.1
GPT-5 $0.0063, MiniMax M2.1 $0.0009 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
GPT-5
GPT-5 $0.39, MiniMax M2.1 $0.59.
Published attempt cost and pass rate

At a glance

Coding index: GPT-5 38.8 from 3 benchmarks, MiniMax M2.1 not benchmarked.
Widest category: Math, 10.1 points apart on average over 5 shared benchmarks.
Widest single gap: MedCode (Vals AI): GPT-5 49.6% against MiniMax M2.1 34.1%, 15.6 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
Output price: GPT-5 $10.00 against MiniMax M2.1 $1.20 per million output tokens, 8.3x apart.
Context window: GPT-5 takes 400K tokens, MiniMax M2.1 205K.

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.

Boards won, where both have a result
Category	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1
Coding	5	1
Intelligence	1	0
Agentic work	1	0
Reasoning	3	0
Math	5	0
Knowledge	6	2
Web design	3	4
General	3	0
All shared boards	27	7

CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index51

Coding benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
Aider polyglot	88.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
SWE-bench Verified	74.4%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena WebDev	1418	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
AA Coding Index	37.8	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LiveCodeBench (Vals AI)	85.9%	81.8%	GPT-5
SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI)	69.0%	74.8%	MiniMax M2.1
Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI)	20.1%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run)	84.6%	81.0%	GPT-5
Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run)	37.9%	28.8%	GPT-5
Terminal-Bench	49.6%	36.6%	GPT-5
GSO-Bench	6.9%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
WeirdML	60.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
ALE-Bench	807.6	623.8	GPT-5
LMArena Text: coding	1436	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: software and IT	1420	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena WebDev: HTML	1427	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
SciCode	0.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 22 boards here

IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10

Intelligence benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
AA Intelligence Index	23.0	20.9	GPT-5
Epoch Capabilities Index	150.0	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured

Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10

Agentic work benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
τ²-Bench Telecom	86.5%	85.4%	GPT-5
METR time horizons	69.6%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Remote Labor Index	1.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
GDPval	34.8%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
BALROG	32.8%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
DeepResearch Bench	49.6%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
BrowseComp-Plus	80.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 34 boards here

ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30

Reasoning benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
GPQA Diamond	85.6%	78.5%	GPT-5
MMMU Pro (Vals AI)	81.5%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run)	85.4%	83.0%	GPT-5
Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run)	28.5%	23.2%	GPT-5
GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run)	86.2%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
ARC-AGI	65.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
ARC-AGI-2	9.9%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
SimpleBench	56.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Chess puzzles	36.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Mystery game puzzles	23.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
EBR-bench	12.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
VPCT	66.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts	1415	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: expert	1419	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: hard prompts in English	1419	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: diagrams	1252	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: homework	1278	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Kagi LLM Benchmark	72.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 4 boards here

MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index50

Math benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
AIME	93.4%	77.9%	GPT-5
MATH 500 (Vals AI)	96.0%	89.0%	GPT-5
MGSM (Vals AI)	92.8%	87.8%	GPT-5
AA Math Index	94.3	82.7	GPT-5
AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run)	94.3%	82.7%	GPT-5
OTIS Mock AIME	91.4%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3	55.4%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
FrontierMath, tier 4	22.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
ProofBench	18.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
MATH level 5	98.1%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: math	1407	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: mathematical work	1405	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here

KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index62

Knowledge benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
MMLU Pro	86.5%	87.0%	MiniMax M2.1
LegalBench (Vals AI)	86.0%	75.5%	GPT-5
CaseLaw (Vals AI)	66.5%	55.8%	GPT-5
CorpFin (Vals AI)	61.1%	58.9%	GPT-5
TaxEval (Vals AI)	73.4%	66.3%	GPT-5
MortgageTax (Vals AI)	65.5%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
MedQA (Vals AI)	96.3%	91.2%	GPT-5
MedCode (Vals AI)	49.6%	34.1%	GPT-5
MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run)	87.1%	87.5%	MiniMax M2.1
SimpleQA Verified	50.1%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
GeoBench	81.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: science	1416	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare	1413	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: legal and government	1431	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: business and finance	1400	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
FACTS Benchmark Suite	56.5%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here

Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index34

Web design benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
Design Arena: websites	1184	1201	MiniMax M2.1
Design Arena: UI components	1177	1220	MiniMax M2.1
Design Arena: game dev	1185	1134	GPT-5
Design Arena: data viz	1221	1206	GPT-5
Design Arena: 3D	1055	1164	MiniMax M2.1
Design Arena: all code categories	1167	1190	MiniMax M2.1
Design Arena: SVG	1188	1131	GPT-5
Design Arena: ASCII art	1141	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here

GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index30

General benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	Leader
SAGE (Vals AI)	43.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
MedScribe (Vals AI)	83.7%	80.8%	GPT-5
IFBench	73.1%	69.9%	GPT-5
Long context reasoning (AA-LCR)	78.2%	67.7%	GPT-5
DTBench	90.7%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMCA	40.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Fiction.LiveBench	97.2%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Creative writing (Lech Mazur)	86.0%	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text	1406	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: instruction following	1388	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: creative writing	1365	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision	1232	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: English	1409	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: non-English	1397	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: Chinese	1422	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: German	1416	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: Japanese	1409	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: Korean	1360	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: French	1409	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: Spanish	1399	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: Russian	1407	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: Polish	1431	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: multi-turn	1426	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: longer queries	1399	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: writing and language	1384	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Text: entertainment and media	1379	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: English	1231	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: Chinese	1267	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: reading text	1246	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: humor	1219	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: captioning	1212	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: recognizing things	1263	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
LMArena Vision: creative writing	1210	Not measured	Only GPT-5 measured
Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here

Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared

Image generation benchmarks for GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Benchmark	GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1	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

GPT-5$0.0063Fits in one request

MiniMax M2.1$0.0009Fits in one request

MiniMax M2.1 costs less

Repository review

50K input + 3K output tokens

GPT-5$0.092Fits in one request

MiniMax M2.1$0.019Fits in one request

MiniMax M2.1 costs less

Agent loop

200K input + 10K output tokens

GPT-5$0.350Fits in one request

MiniMax M2.1$0.072Exceeds the context window

MiniMax M2.1 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.

Specifications of GPT-5 and MiniMax M2.1
Specification	OpenAI GPT-5	MiniMax M2.1
Maker	OpenAI	MiniMax
Weights	No public weights listed	Open weights
Released	August 7, 2025	December 23, 2025
Context window	400K	205K
Input $/Mtok	$1.25	$0.30
Output $/Mtok	$10.00	$1.20
Coding index	38.8	Not benchmarked
Independent measurements behind it	3	1
Cost per solved task	$0.39	$0.59
Source	OpenRouter listing	OpenRouter listing

Questions

Is GPT-5 better than MiniMax M2.1 for coding?

Only GPT-5 has a coding score, 38.8 on the Vibe Coding Index; MiniMax M2.1 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick MiniMax M2.1 for output tokens 8.3x cheaper ($1.20 vs $10.00 per million) and work measured by SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) or MMLU Pro, where it leads.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 or MiniMax M2.1?

GPT-5 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens; MiniMax M2.1 costs $0.30 and $1.20. Per solved SWE-bench Verified task, GPT-5 costs $0.39 and MiniMax M2.1 $0.59.

Which has the bigger context window, GPT-5 or MiniMax M2.1?

GPT-5, with 400K tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks is the GPT-5 vs MiniMax M2.1 comparison based on?

34 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. GPT-5's coding index rests on 3 independent benchmarks and MiniMax M2.1's on 1. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.

GPT-5 or MiniMax M2.1: which to pick

Which one for your work

Coding

Intelligence

Reasoning

Math

Knowledge

Web design

Long documents

Everyday cost

Cost per solved task

At a glance

Benchmark by benchmark

What each workload costs

Chat turn

Repository review

Agent loop

Specification differences

Questions

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