# Llama 4 Scout vs MiniMax M3

On provider list prices, Llama 4 Scout costs $0.18 per million input tokens against $0.30 for MiniMax M3: 1.7x apart. Output is $0.59 against $1.20 (2.0x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## Specifications

| | Llama 4 Scout | MiniMax M3 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | Meta | MiniMaxAI |
| Access | Open weights | API only |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 512K tokens |
| List price, input | $0.18 / M tokens | $0.30 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $0.59 / M tokens | $1.20 / M tokens |
| Cached input | n/a | $0.06 / M tokens |
| License | Llama community | Proprietary API |
| Fine-tunable | Yes | No |

Specifications and provider list prices from the Allocate catalog, checked 2026-07-08. Billed price is list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## What the numbers say

Take 1,000,000 requests a month at 1,200 input and 350 output tokens each. That workload costs $422.50 a month on Llama 4 Scout and $780 on MiniMax M3 at list: a gap of $357.50, or 1.8x.

Llama 4 Scout reads 1M tokens per request against 512K for MiniMax M3, 2.0x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose Llama 4 Scout for

- Whole-document reasoning
- High-volume extraction
- Fine-tuning under the Llama 4 license

## Choose MiniMax M3 for

- Published cached-input pricing ($0.06 per M tokens)

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Scout or MiniMax M3?

Llama 4 Scout, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $0.18/$0.59 per million tokens in and out against $0.30/$1.20 for MiniMax M3. Billed on Allocate: $0.19/$0.63 against $0.32/$1.28, list plus 7%.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Llama 4 Scout: 1,048,576 tokens (1M) against 524,288 (512K) for MiniMax M3.

### Can I fine-tune Llama 4 Scout or MiniMax M3?

Llama 4 Scout publishes open weights (Llama community) and can be fine-tuned on your own data. MiniMax M3 is a closed model served over API; its weights are not available.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/meta-llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct-vs-minimaxai-minimax-m3) · [Llama 4 Scout](https://allocate.network/models/meta-llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct.md) · [MiniMax M3](https://allocate.network/models/minimaxai-minimax-m3.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)