// head_to_head
MiniMax M1 vs Inkling
Published LiveBench scores across all seven categories, live list pricing, context windows, and the measured cost of a point of capability — for both models, side by side.
MiniMax M1 is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
MiniMax M1 does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
minimax
MiniMax M1
- Blended / 1M
- $0.963
- Context
- 1M
- Released
- Jun 17, 2025
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
thinkingmachines
Inkling
- Blended / 1M
- $1.76
- Context
- 524K
- Released
- Jul 17, 2026
- Overall score
- 47.0
Specs and pricing
| Metric | MiniMax M1 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Weighted mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | — | 47.0 |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | — | $0.0179 |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.963win | $1.76 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.550win | $1.00 |
| Output price / 1M | $2.20win | $4.05 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | — | $0.170 |
| Context window | 1Mwin | 524K |
| Max output tokens | 40K | 472Kwin |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — MiniMax M1 on top, Inkling below, both out of 100.
What each one costs to run
Per-token prices are hard to feel. These are monthly list costs for both models across five workload shapes, using each provider's published cached-input rate where there is one.
| Workload | MiniMax M1 | Inkling |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $308.00/mo | $504.24/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $572.00/mo | $711.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $616.00/mo | $659.20/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $715.00/mo | $1,262/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $1,595/mo | $2,490/mo |
Which should you pick?
You need to fit large documents in one call
MiniMax M1
Wider context window — 1M against 524K.
MiniMax M1 vs Inkling FAQ
Which is better, MiniMax M1 or Inkling?
MiniMax M1 is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. MiniMax M1 does not have a published LiveBench run, so this comparison covers price, context and declared capabilities only. A missing score means "not evaluated", not "worse" — the right way to separate these two is an eval on your own workload.
Is MiniMax M1 cheaper than Inkling?
MiniMax M1 is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, MiniMax M1 lists at $0.963 per million tokens and Inkling at $1.76 — MiniMax M1 is 1.8× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — MiniMax M1 charges $0.550 in and $2.20 out, Inkling charges $1.00 and $4.05 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does MiniMax M1 or Inkling have a bigger context window?
MiniMax M1 has the larger context window: 1M for MiniMax M1 against 524K for Inkling. Note that a window you can fill is not a window you should fill — retrieval quality usually degrades well before the limit, and you pay for every token you put in it.
Do MiniMax M1 and Inkling support prompt caching?
Inkling publishes a cached-input rate of $0.170 per million tokens against a full input rate of $1.00. The catalogue lists no separate cached rate for MiniMax M1, which means the provider does not price it separately here — not that caching is unavailable.
Related comparisons
How these numbers are produced
- Price — provider list price from OpenRouter, refreshed every 15 minutes. “Blended” is a 3:1 input:output mix.
- Scores — LiveBench release 2026-10-25, using their own category map. Each model shows its strongest published run. A blank means “not evaluated”, never “bad”.
- Cost per point — the measured dollars LiveBench spent on the run, divided by the score it earned.
- “Win” — awarded only past a threshold: one full point on a benchmark score, 10% on a price, 25% on a context window. Anything tighter reports as a tie, because effort settings alone move a LiveBench score by more than that.
Published benchmarks rank models on someone else's tasks. Before committing, see LLM & agent evaluation for building an eval on your own.