{"type":"analysis","id":"analysis:minimax-is-pricing-m3-1-flash-to-become-the-default-cheap-model-in-coding","slug":"minimax-is-pricing-m3-1-flash-to-become-the-default-cheap-model-in-coding","title":"MiniMax is pricing M3.1 Flash to become the default cheap model in coding agents, but its \"25x cheaper\" claim needs a stated comparison","description":"M3.1 Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens, and MiniMax sells it through its own coding product as well as its API. That points to a bid to be the default model for high-volume agent work. The \"~25x cheaper than Opus and GPT\" headline never says which model or which price it is measured against. And the anonymous Space Bunny run shows the model was used heavily while free, which is not the same as proof that it is good.","published_at":"2026-10-20T15:00:00.000Z","updated_at":"2026-10-20T15:00:00.000Z","record_date":"2026-10-20","topics":["agents","coding_agents"],"source_urls":["https://www.minimax.io/blog/minimax-m31f","https://minimax.io/blog/minimax-m31f"],"language":"en","routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/analysis/minimax-is-pricing-m3-1-flash-to-become-the-default-cheap-model-in-coding/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/analysis/minimax-is-pricing-m3-1-flash-to-become-the-default-cheap-model-in-coding.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/analysis/minimax-is-pricing-m3-1-flash-to-become-the-default-cheap-model-in-coding.json"},"author":{"role":"author","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"editorial_provenance":{"desk":"authorial","target_ref":"story_cluster:minimax-m3-1-flash-coding-model-81507ea095ec","authorial_article_id":"a118821f-7c0e-4e13-8881-6cf35bcdfc36"},"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agents/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents/","title":"Agents","reason":"Explore the agents topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/coding-agents/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/coding-agents/","title":"Coding Agents","reason":"Explore the coding_agents topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/coding-agents.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/coding-agents.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/analysis/","url":"https://newruntime.com/analysis/","title":"Analysis","reason":"Open the latest authorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/analysis.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}