Model comparison
Claude Fable 5 vs MiniMax M3
Anthropic against MiniMax, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
Anthropic
Claude Fable 5
Frontier
MiniMax
MiniMax M3
Frontier · Open weights
| Specification | Claude Fable 5 | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Input / 1M tokens | $10 | Winner: $0.30 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $50 | Winner: $1.20 |
| Weights | Closed | Open |
| Parameters | Not disclosedUnverified | 428B total / 23B active (MoE) |
| Reasoning levels | adaptive | low, high, max |
| Modalities | text, image | text, image, video |
| API model id | claude-fable-5 | minimax-m3 |
| Released | June 9, 2026 | June 1, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | Winner: 62 | 51 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-06-01) | Not verifiedUnverified | 66 |
Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
- 2026-06-01: MiniMax blog (vendor, Terminus 2 scaffolding, 2h timeout)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
Pricing tiers: Claude Fable 5: Standard $10/$50 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Sibling Claude Mythos 5 is invite-only cyber-defense. Access briefly suspended 2026-06-12, redeployed 2026-07-01. · MiniMax M3: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above.
Claude Fable 5
Claude Fable 5 is Anthropic's next-generation intelligence model for long-running agents, topped LiveBench until the 5.1 refresh.
Best for
- Long-running agents
- Frontier reasoning
- Enterprise work
Watch out
Most expensive Anthropic tier at $10/$50; verify the cost is justified by the task.
MiniMax M3
MiniMax M3 is an open-weight (community license) 428B MoE with native multimodal and 1M context.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Multimodal
- Long-context
Watch out
Community license, not fully open; verify terms.
When the cheaper one wins
MiniMax M3 is cheaper on output at $1.20 per million tokens against $50 for Claude Fable 5 — about 42×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.
Run the model pickerEvidence confidence: High
How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.
- Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
- 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, parameter count.
- 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
- Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
- Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.
Source receipts
Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.
- Claude Fable 5: Anthropic — Claude Fable 5 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Claude Fable 5: Anthropic news — Claude Fable 5 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax — M3 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax M3 release (accessed 2026-08-29)
Related comparisons
- Claude Fable 5.1 vs MiniMax M3
- Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1
- Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Haiku 4.5
- Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Mythos 5.1
- Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Opus 5
- Claude Fable 5 vs Claude Sonnet 5
Diving deeper on one model? Claude Fable 5 · MiniMax M3
Common questions
Claude Fable 5 vs MiniMax M3
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is Claude Fable 5 or MiniMax M3 cheaper for input?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $10 for Claude Fable 5 — roughly 33× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Fable 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $10/$50 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Sibling Claude Mythos 5 is invite-only cyber-defense. Access briefly suspended 2026-06-12, redeployed 2026-07-01. MiniMax M3 has tiered pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above.
Is Claude Fable 5 or MiniMax M3 cheaper for output?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $1.20 per million output tokens, against $50 for Claude Fable 5 — roughly 42× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Claude Fable 5 has tiered pricing: Standard $10/$50 per MTok; cache reads 10% of base input. Sibling Claude Mythos 5 is invite-only cyber-defense. Access briefly suspended 2026-06-12, redeployed 2026-07-01. MiniMax M3 has tiered pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above.
Which has the larger context window, Claude Fable 5 or MiniMax M3?
Both accept about 1M tokens of context, so document length will not decide between them.
Do Claude Fable 5 and MiniMax M3 support the same reasoning levels?
Claude Fable 5 exposes adaptive, while MiniMax M3 exposes low, high, max.
Should I use Claude Fable 5 or MiniMax M3?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Fable 5 suits long-running agents; MiniMax M3 suits open-weight deployments.
Can I self-host Claude Fable 5 or MiniMax M3?
MiniMax M3 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Claude Fable 5 is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.
Next step
Choosing between them
The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.
- Input price: MiniMax M3 costs $0.30 per 1M tokens versus $10 for Claude Fable 5 — a 33.3x difference at the headline tier.
- Deployment: MiniMax M3 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.
Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.