---
type: analysis
slug: research-minimax-m3-1-flash-is-out-at-0-15-0-60-per-million-tokens-but-runs-about-half
title: "MiniMax M3.1 Flash is out at $0.15/$0.60 per million tokens, but runs about half as fast as advertised in independent tests and has no open"
description: "MiniMax's blog and pricing page confirm the October 19 launch and its flat low price. Artificial Analysis measured about 105 tokens/s against MiniMax's claim of 200+, found a very high hallucination rate, and MiniMax itself has not committed to a date for the weights."
published_at: 2026-10-21T13:00:00.000Z
topics: ["tools","agents","reasoning","research"]
source_urls: ["https://www.minimax.io/blog/minimax-m31f","https://platform.minimax.io/docs/pricing/overview","https://agent.minimax.io/tools/m3-1-flash-preview","https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/minimax-m3-1-flash","https://openrouter.ai/minimax/minimax-m3.1-flash:free","https://venturebeat.com/technology/minimaxs-new-m3-1-flash-beats-deepseek-and-opus-5-on-a-key-business-benchmark-at-lower-cost-but-with-a-high-hallucination-rate","https://the-decoder.com/minimax-m3-1-flash-shows-chinas-ai-price-race-has-no-floor-in-sight/"]
author: "Andrey Reshetnikov"
author_profile: https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md
---
MiniMax shipped M3.1 Flash as the generally available version of its M3.1-Flash-Preview, aimed at agentic coding, computer use, finance tooling and security tasks. The newsroom held the story because the only verified source, the API overview, listed the model ID, a 1M-token context window and adjustable thinking depth. It did not support the claims circulating with the launch: the date, the price, the speed, free access and open weights.

This matters to builders because the price is the lowest MiniMax lists for an LLM. It also comes with a long context window, which makes it a plausible default for high-volume agent loops. But a cheap, fast model that confidently makes things up can cost more downstream than it saves. The useful question is which launch claims hold up against primary and independent sources.

## What we checked

- **Can a primary MiniMax announcement or model-specific pricing page verify the release date, price, speed, and access claims?** partly confirmed. MiniMax's launch blog (dated 2026-10-19) and its API pricing page confirm the date and price: $0.15 input, $0.60 output and $0.015 cached input per 1M tokens. They also confirm access through the API, M Plan and MiniMax Code, plus the speed claims (200+ tok/s, P50 170+, 'nearly 3x faster'). Neither page mentions free access or gives a date for open weights. The blog only says weights 'will be released later'. [1][2][3]
- **Does independent measurement support MiniMax's 200+ tokens/s speed claim?** refuted. Artificial Analysis lists output speed at 104.7 tokens/s on its model page. That is about half the vendor figure and slightly below the median for its price tier. Different setups (the first-party endpoint versus a benchmark harness, and max reasoning effort) could explain part of the gap. [4][1]
- **Are the weights openly available now?** refuted. Artificial Analysis lists the model as proprietary with no public weights. MiniMax's blog says the weights will come 'later'. VentureBeat and The Decoder report a planned date of October 23, but I could not confirm that date on a MiniMax page I could open. [4][1][6][7]

## What we found

- The release and price are confirmed by MiniMax itself. The launch blog is dated 2026-10-19 and gives flat per-1M-token rates of $0.15 input, $0.60 output and $0.015 cached input. The API pricing page lists the same rates for MiniMax-M3.1-Flash with no long-context tier. MiniMax-M3, after a 'permanent 50% off', is $0.30/$1.20 up to 512k input tokens and doubles above that, with a Priority tier at 1.5x. [1][2]
- MiniMax's speed claims (200+ tokens/s in everyday use, P50 170+ tokens/s, 'nearly three times faster' online inference) are the company's own. Artificial Analysis measured 104.7 tokens/s, slightly below the median for its price tier. The '70% lower usage cost' figure compares agentic-task totals with the previous generation. MiniMax's tools page says it is not a comparison of API unit prices. [1][3][4]
- Access is through the MiniMax API, the M Plan subscription and the MiniMax Code desktop app. MiniMax's pricing page lists no free allowance. OpenRouter hosts a 'MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free)' variant, but the page does not say how long it lasts or what the limits are, beyond rate-limit (429) handling. [1][2][5]
- MiniMax's own benchmark figures are BankerToolBench 76.2, DeepSWE v1.1 73.7%, OSWorld V2 61.7, Agents' Last Exam 29.6 and CyberGym 82%. The blog compares them only against unnamed 'top models'. Independently, Artificial Analysis scores the model 43 on its Intelligence Index (launch coverage said 42) and puts it #4 of 173 in its class. It costs about $0.22 per Index task, which VentureBeat reports is down from about $0.51 for M3. [1][4][6]
- Reliability is the main caveat. VentureBeat and The Decoder, citing Artificial Analysis, report a 93% hallucination rate on AA-Omniscience. The model attempts nearly every question and rarely says it doesn't know. It answered about 56% correctly but scored only 16 overall on that index. [6][7]
- The weights are not open. Artificial Analysis lists the model as proprietary. MiniMax's blog promises the weights 'later' with no date. A planned October 23 date appears in VentureBeat and The Decoder, but no MiniMax page I opened confirmed it. Search snippets mention a 428B-total, 23B-active MoE design, but neither the blog nor MiniMax's tools page states a parameter count. [4][1][6][3]

## What it means

The launch is real, and you can trust the price: $0.15/$0.60 with cheap cache reads and no surcharge for long prompts makes MiniMax-M3.1-Flash a strong candidate for high-volume agent loops, coding sub-agents and long-context batch jobs. MiniMax's tools page says reasoning is always on, with five effort levels defaulting to the most expensive. Budget for those reasoning tokens. Artificial Analysis's roughly $0.22 per Index task was measured at max effort. For latency planning, assume something closer to the independently measured ~105 tokens/s than the vendor's 200+ until you've benchmarked your own traffic.

The hallucination profile is the deciding factor. Don't use it unchecked for fact retrieval, finance or other high-stakes autonomous actions. Pair it with retrieval grounding, tool-verified outputs, or a verifier or second model on critical steps, and test whether lower effort settings change how often it declines to answer. Don't plan self-hosting around October 23 until MiniMax actually publishes weights and a license. Treat OpenRouter's free endpoint as a short-lived trial, not a production tier.

## Still open

- Will MiniMax publish the weights on October 23 as reported, and under what license?
- What are the actual architecture and parameter count (the 428B/23B-active figure is unverified in primary sources)?
- Why does MiniMax's 200+ tok/s claim differ from Artificial Analysis's 104.7 tok/s measurement (endpoint, effort level, load)?
- How long does OpenRouter's free variant last, and with what rate limits?

## Sources

1. [MiniMax M3.1 Flash: Redefining Agent Performance and Cost - MiniMax](https://www.minimax.io/blog/minimax-m31f) (primary)
2. [Pricing Overview - MiniMax API Docs](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/pricing/overview) (primary)
3. [MiniMax M3.1 Flash is Now Generally Available - MiniMax Agent](https://agent.minimax.io/tools/m3-1-flash-preview) (primary)
4. [MiniMax-M3.1-Flash - Artificial Analysis](https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/minimax-m3-1-flash)
5. [MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) - OpenRouter](https://openrouter.ai/minimax/minimax-m3.1-flash:free)
6. [MiniMax's new M3.1 Flash beats DeepSeek and Opus 5 on a key business benchmark at lower cost — but with a high hallucination rate - VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/technology/minimaxs-new-m3-1-flash-beats-deepseek-and-opus-5-on-a-key-business-benchmark-at-lower-cost-but-with-a-high-hallucination-rate)
7. [MiniMax M3.1 Flash shows China's AI price race has no floor in sight - The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com/minimax-m3-1-flash-shows-chinas-ai-price-race-has-no-floor-in-sight/)

Author: [Andrey Reshetnikov](https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md), AI product and AI engineering; profile for recruiters and agents: https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json

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