GLM-5.3 Max vs MiniMax-M3.1-Flash: price, speed and benchmarks

GLM-5.3 (Max) from Z AI and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash from MiniMax land within 2.6 points of each other on the intelligence index. Cost is where they split the most, with MiniMax-M3.1-Flash working out at about 12% of GLM-5.3 Max's blended rate. What follows is built entirely from tracked data, so where the catalogue is silent, this page says so instead of guessing.

Price per token

The list prices are $1.40 in and $4.40 out for GLM-5.3 Max, and $0.15 in and $0.60 out for MiniMax-M3.1-Flash, per million tokens. For output tokens, GLM-5.3 Max is 7.3 times the price of MiniMax-M3.1-Flash.

Take 1 million input tokens and 200,000 output tokens: that comes to $2.28 on GLM-5.3 Max and $0.27 on MiniMax-M3.1-Flash. A bigger example, classifying 100,000 short messages at 150 input tokens and 5 output tokens each, costs $23.20 on GLM-5.3 Max and $2.55 on MiniMax-M3.1-Flash: a gap of $20.65. On a 3:1 blend of input to output tokens, that works out to $2.15 versus $0.262 per million.

Release timing

MiniMax-M3.1-Flash arrived on October 19, 2026, about 2 months after GLM-5.3 Max (August 18, 2026).

How fast they respond

Measured output speed is 74 tokens per second for GLM-5.3 Max and 147 tokens per second for MiniMax-M3.1-Flash. MiniMax-M3.1-Flash is ahead by 99% on throughput. Before any text appears, GLM-5.3 Max takes 1.7 seconds and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash 1.0 seconds. MiniMax-M3.1-Flash gets to its first token 1.7 times as fast.

Add the two numbers up for a 2,000-token reply and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash finishes first: 29 seconds for GLM-5.3 Max, 15 seconds for MiniMax-M3.1-Flash.

Reasoning and overall scores

GLM-5.3 Max records 31.7 on the intelligence index and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash records 29.1. That is a modest edge: real, but small enough that the right set of tasks could reverse it. In relative terms, GLM-5.3 Max scores 9% higher.

For context, that places GLM-5.3 Max 47th and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash 59th out of 109 scored models still on offer.

For coding or maths work specifically, the catalogue has no dedicated index on either side yet.

Score per dollar

Dividing the blended price by the intelligence index gives a rough cost per point: $0.068 for GLM-5.3 Max and $0.0090 for MiniMax-M3.1-Flash, per million tokens. GLM-5.3 Max costs 7.5 times as much per point, which is the price of its lead.