Model comparison
MiniMax M3 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
MiniMax against NVIDIA, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.
Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below
MiniMax
MiniMax M3
Frontier · Open weights
NVIDIA
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
Frontier · Open weights
| Specification | MiniMax M3 | NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | MiniMax | NVIDIA |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | Not verifiedUnverified | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.30 | $0.50 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $1.20 | $2.20 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Parameters | 428B total / 23B active (MoE) | 550B total / 55B active (MoE) |
| Reasoning levels | low, high, max | low, high, max |
| Modalities | text, image, video | text |
| API model id | minimax-m3 | nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b |
| Released | June 1, 2026 | June 4, 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | 51 | Winner: 54 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-06-01) | 66 | Not verifiedUnverified |
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: 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. · NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE.
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.
NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
Nemotron 3 Ultra is NVIDIA's open-weight (550B/55B) frontier MoE with a 1M-token context.
Best for
- Open-weight frontier
- Self-hosting on NVIDIA GPUs
- Reasoning
Watch out
Top US open-weight until Thinking Machines Inkling; verify hosted pricing.
When the cheaper one wins
MiniMax M3 is cheaper on output at $1.20 per million tokens against $2.20 for NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra — about 1.8×. 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.
- 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output.
- 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.
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax — M3 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax M3 release (accessed 2026-08-29)
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: NVIDIA — Nemotron (accessed 2026-08-29)
- NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra (accessed 2026-08-29)
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Diving deeper on one model? MiniMax M3 · NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
Common questions
MiniMax M3 vs NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is MiniMax M3 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra cheaper for input?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $0.50 for NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra — roughly 1.7× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; 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. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra has tiered pricing: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE.
Is MiniMax M3 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra cheaper for output?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $1.20 per million output tokens, against $2.20 for NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra — roughly 1.8× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; 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. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra has tiered pricing: Open weights (weights + data + recipes); $0.50/$2.20 per MTok is the third-party hosted rate (OpenRouter). 550B/55B MoE.
Which has the larger context window, MiniMax M3 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra?
Both accept about 1M tokens of context, so document length will not decide between them.
Do MiniMax M3 and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra support the same reasoning levels?
Yes — both accept the same effort settings: "low", "high", "max". Higher effort costs more and takes longer, so start low and raise it only where output quality actually improves.
Should I use MiniMax M3 or NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. MiniMax M3 suits open-weight deployments; NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra suits open-weight frontier.
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 $0.50 for NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra — a 1.7x difference at the headline tier.
- Measured capability: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 54 to 51 (measured 2026-08-14).
Choosing a harness rather than a model — Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Windsurf, or Lovable? Compare agentic harnesses · Latest releases.