Model comparison

Claude Mythos 5.1 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: Medium — see receipts below

Anthropic

Claude Mythos 5.1

Frontier

MiniMax

MiniMax M3

Frontier · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
Specification	Claude Mythos 5.1	MiniMax M3
Provider	Anthropic	MiniMax
Tier	Frontier	Frontier
Context window	Not verifiedUnverified	1M
Max output	Not verifiedUnverified	Not verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens	$10	Winner: $0.30
Output / 1M tokens	$50	Winner: $1.20
Weights	Closed	Open
Parameters	cyber/bio research variant of Fable 5.1	428B total / 23B active (MoE)
Reasoning levels	adaptive	low, high, max
Modalities	text, image	text, image, video
API model id	claude-mythos-5	minimax-m3
Released	September 1, 2026	June 1, 2026
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14)	Not verifiedUnverified	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 Mythos 5.1: Starts at $10/$50 per MTok — priced with Fable 5.1, which shares the same underlying model. API id claude-mythos-5 replaced the deprecated claude-mythos-preview. · 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.

FrontierRecord checked September 3, 2026

Claude Mythos 5.1

Claude Mythos 5.1 is Anthropic's most capable model for cybersecurity and biology research — the Fable 5.1 model with fewer cyber/bio safeguards, restricted to vetted US organisations.

Best for

Cyber-defence research
Biology research
Claude Security workloads

Watch out

Invite-only (vetted US organisations, verification programmes); 30-day data retention applies by default. Same underlying model as Fable 5.1 — most teams should just use Fable.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked September 5, 2026

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 Mythos 5.1 — 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 picker

Evidence confidence: Medium

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: context window, max output.
No shared named benchmark — No benchmark has been measured on both models.
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 Mythos 5.1: Anthropic — Claude Mythos (accessed 2026-09-03)
Claude Mythos 5.1: Anthropic — model deprecations (claude-mythos-5) (accessed 2026-09-03)
MiniMax M3: MiniMax — M3 (accessed 2026-08-29)
MiniMax M3: MiniMax M3 release (accessed 2026-08-29)

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Claude Mythos 5.1 · MiniMax M3

Common questions

Claude Mythos 5.1 vs MiniMax M3

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Claude Mythos 5.1 or MiniMax M3 cheaper for input?

MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $10 for Claude Mythos 5.1 — 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 Mythos 5.1 has tiered pricing: Starts at $10/$50 per MTok — priced with Fable 5.1, which shares the same underlying model. API id claude-mythos-5 replaced the deprecated claude-mythos-preview. 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 Mythos 5.1 or MiniMax M3 cheaper for output?

MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $1.20 per million output tokens, against $50 for Claude Mythos 5.1 — 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 Mythos 5.1 has tiered pricing: Starts at $10/$50 per MTok — priced with Fable 5.1, which shares the same underlying model. API id claude-mythos-5 replaced the deprecated claude-mythos-preview. 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.

Do Claude Mythos 5.1 and MiniMax M3 support the same reasoning levels?

Claude Mythos 5.1 exposes adaptive, while MiniMax M3 exposes low, high, max.

Should I use Claude Mythos 5.1 or MiniMax M3?

Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Claude Mythos 5.1 suits cyber-defence research; MiniMax M3 suits open-weight deployments.

Can I self-host Claude Mythos 5.1 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 Mythos 5.1 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 Mythos 5.1 — a 33.3x difference at the headline tier.
Deployment: MiniMax M3 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.

Run the model picker Estimate stack cost All model comparisons

Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.