// head_to_head
MiniMax M3 vs Moondream 3.1
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 M3 is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
Moondream 3.1 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 M3
- Blended / 1M
- $0.525
- Context
- 1.0M
- Released
- May 31, 2026
- Overall score
- 53.7
moondream
Moondream 3.1
- Blended / 1M
- $0.850
- Context
- 32K
- Released
- Oct 15, 2026
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
Specs and pricing
| Metric | MiniMax M3 | Moondream 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 53.7 | — |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $1.33 | — |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.525win | $0.850 |
| Input price / 1M | $0.300 | $0.300 |
| Output price / 1M | $1.20win | $2.50 |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.060 | — |
| Context window | 1.0Mwin | 32K |
| Max output tokens | 512Kwin | 4K |
Benchmarks by category
An overall score averages away the thing you probably care about. These are the seven LiveBench categories scored separately — MiniMax M3 on top, Moondream 3.1 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 M3 | Moondream 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $150.72/mo | $272.00/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $216.00/mo | $390.00/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $201.60/mo | $440.00/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $378.00/mo | $487.50/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $750.00/mo | $1,000/mo |
Which should you pick?
You need to fit large documents in one call
MiniMax M3
Wider context window — 1.0M against 32K.
MiniMax M3 vs Moondream 3.1 FAQ
Which is better, MiniMax M3 or Moondream 3.1?
MiniMax M3 is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. Moondream 3.1 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 M3 cheaper than Moondream 3.1?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, MiniMax M3 lists at $0.525 per million tokens and Moondream 3.1 at $0.850 — MiniMax M3 is 1.6× cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — MiniMax M3 charges $0.300 in and $1.20 out, Moondream 3.1 charges $0.300 and $2.50 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does MiniMax M3 or Moondream 3.1 have a bigger context window?
MiniMax M3 has the larger context window: 1.0M for MiniMax M3 against 32K for Moondream 3.1. 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 M3 and Moondream 3.1 support prompt caching?
MiniMax M3 publishes a cached-input rate of $0.060 per million tokens against a full input rate of $0.300. The catalogue lists no separate cached rate for Moondream 3.1, 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 2026-09-02, 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.