# MiniMax M3 vs Claude Sonnet 5

On provider list prices, MiniMax M3 costs $0.30 per million input tokens against $3 for Claude Sonnet 5: 10.0x apart. Output is $1.20 against $15 (12.5x). On Allocate both bill at list plus the 7% transaction fee.

## Specifications

| | MiniMax M3 | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lab | MiniMaxAI | Anthropic |
| Access | API only | API only |
| Context window | 512K tokens | 1M tokens |
| List price, input | $0.30 / M tokens | $3 / M tokens |
| List price, output | $1.20 / M tokens | $15 / M tokens |
| Cached input | $0.06 / M tokens | n/a |
| License | Proprietary API | Proprietary API |
| Fine-tunable | No | 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 $780 a month on MiniMax M3 and $8,850 on Claude Sonnet 5 at list: a gap of $8,070, or 11.3x.

Claude Sonnet 5 reads 1M tokens per request against 512K for MiniMax M3, 1.9x the window. That decides which one can take whole documents without splitting them.

## Choose MiniMax M3 for

- The lower list price ($0.30 in / $1.20 out per M tokens)
- Published cached-input pricing ($0.06 per M tokens)

## Choose Claude Sonnet 5 for

- Judgment calls with policy context
- Customer-facing writing
- Review and escalation flows

## Common questions

### Which is cheaper, MiniMax M3 or Claude Sonnet 5?

MiniMax M3, on this workload shape. At list prices it is $0.30/$1.20 per million tokens in and out against $3/$15 for Claude Sonnet 5. Billed on Allocate: $0.32/$1.28 against $3.21/$16.05, list plus 7%.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Claude Sonnet 5: 1,000,000 tokens (1M) against 524,288 (512K) for MiniMax M3.

### Can I fine-tune MiniMax M3 or Claude Sonnet 5?

No. Both are closed models served over API. If you want a model you can train and own, start from an open-weights base in the catalog.

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[HTML page](https://allocate.network/compare/minimaxai-minimax-m3-vs-sonnet-5) · [MiniMax M3](https://allocate.network/models/minimaxai-minimax-m3.md) · [Claude Sonnet 5](https://allocate.network/models/sonnet-5.md) · [Machine-readable catalog](https://allocate.network/catalog.json)