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title: MiniMax M3.1 Flash vs. MiniMax M3: One is cheaper, but...
description: Hands-on testing found MiniMax's new M3.1 Flash model cheaper than M3 but not faster or more accurate. MiniMax claims Flash cuts agentic task costs by 70% and...
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og:description: Hands-on testing found MiniMax's new M3.1 Flash model cheaper than M3 but not faster or more accurate. MiniMax claims Flash cuts agentic task costs by 70% and...
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# MiniMax M3.1 Flash vs. MiniMax M3: One is cheaper, but not faster or better

**[The New Stack](https://daily.dev/sources/newstack)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Hands-on testing found MiniMax's new M3.1 Flash model cheaper than M3 but not faster or more accurate. MiniMax claims Flash cuts agentic task costs by 70% and makes inference nearly three times faster, pricing it at $0.15 per million input tokens versus M3's $0.30. Across three agent tasks (a bug fix, an incident investigation, and a long-context test) both models scored identically on the two graded tasks, and neither answered the long-context question. Flash's estimated total cost was $0.15 versus M3's $0.27, but M3 finished faster overall, 465 seconds versus 661.6 seconds.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://thenewstack.io/minimax-flash-agent-tests>

## Questions this post answers

### Is MiniMax M3.1 Flash actually faster than MiniMax M3 for agentic tasks?

No, in hands-on testing M3 finished faster overall despite MiniMax's claim that Flash is nearly three times faster at online inference. Across three agent tasks, M3's total model time was 465.0 seconds versus Flash's 661.6 seconds. Online inference speed differs from the total time needed to complete a tool-using task, which is what slowed Flash down.

_Anyone picking between MiniMax M3 and M3.1 Flash for agent workloads can compare real run times tracked on daily.dev._

### How much cheaper is MiniMax M3.1 Flash than MiniMax M3 in practice?

Flash listed at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens, half M3's discounted rates of $0.30 and $1.20. Across three test tasks, Flash's estimated total cost came out to $0.15 versus M3's $0.27, roughly 44% lower, even though Flash used more input and output tokens overall.

_Teams weighing cost against speed for agentic LLM tasks can track pricing comparisons like this on daily.dev._

### Do MiniMax M3 and M3.1 Flash handle long-context tasks reliably?

No, neither model reliably answered a roughly 500,000-token long-context question about service dependencies. Flash hit its 64,000-token output limit without writing an answer, and M3 stopped after about 29,000 output tokens without answering. When output was capped at 28,000 tokens for both, Flash answered but found only 3 of 33 affected services, while M3 again failed to answer.

_Developers evaluating long-context agent reliability before adopting a model can find test breakdowns like this on daily.dev._

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Google's Gemini 3.5 Flash costs 3x the model it replaced, and the era of cheap AI is ending](https://daily.dev/posts/google-s-gemini-3-5-flash-costs-3x-the-model-it-replaced-and-the-era-of-cheap-ai-is-ending-ochkeykzb) · XDA Developers · 2 upvotes · 0 comments

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