// head_to_head
MiniMax M3 vs Qwen-Plus
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.
Qwen-Plus is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here.
Qwen-Plus 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
- 67.3
qwen
Qwen-Plus
- Blended / 1M
- $0.390
- Context
- 1M
- Released
- Feb 1, 2025
- Overall score
- Not evaluated
Specs and pricing
| Metric | MiniMax M3 | Qwen-Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench overall Mean of the seven LiveBench category scores, 0–100. Higher is better. | 67.3 | — |
| Cost per point Measured benchmark spend divided by overall score — dollars per point of capability. | $0.0339 | — |
| Blended price / 1M 3:1 input:output mix, the usual shape of production traffic. | $0.525 | $0.390win |
| Input price / 1M | $0.300 | $0.260win |
| Output price / 1M | $1.20 | $0.780win |
| Cached input / 1M Price of an input token served from the prompt cache, where the provider publishes one. | $0.060 | $0.052win |
| Context window | 1.0M | 1M |
| Max output tokens | 512Kwin | 33K |
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, Qwen-Plus 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 | Qwen-Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot 1.2K in / 400 out × 200K requests | $150.72/mo | $109.82/mo |
| RAG assistant 8K in / 600 out × 100K requests | $216.00/mo | $171.60/mo |
| Coding agent 40K in / 4K out × 20K requests | $201.60/mo | $153.92/mo |
| Document extraction 20K in / 1.5K out × 50K requests | $378.00/mo | $308.10/mo |
| Bulk classification 500 in / 20 out × 5M requests | $750.00/mo | $624.00/mo |
Which should you pick?
You are cost-constrained
Qwen-Plus
Cheaper on blended list price at $0.390 per million tokens.
MiniMax M3 vs Qwen-Plus FAQ
Which is better, MiniMax M3 or Qwen-Plus?
Qwen-Plus is the cheaper of the two; neither can be ranked on quality here. Qwen-Plus 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 Qwen-Plus?
Qwen-Plus is cheaper. On a 3:1 input:output blend, MiniMax M3 lists at $0.525 per million tokens and Qwen-Plus at $0.390 — Qwen-Plus is 35% cheaper. Input and output are priced separately — MiniMax M3 charges $0.300 in and $1.20 out, Qwen-Plus charges $0.260 and $0.780 — so the model that looks cheaper flips depending on how output-heavy your workload is.
Does MiniMax M3 or Qwen-Plus have a bigger context window?
They are effectively the same — 1.0M for MiniMax M3 and 1M for Qwen-Plus.
Do MiniMax M3 and Qwen-Plus support prompt caching?
Both publish a cached-input rate: $0.060 per million for MiniMax M3 and $0.052 for Qwen-Plus, against full input rates of $0.300 and $0.260. On a workload with a long stable prefix — a system prompt, a tool schema, a retrieved corpus — that changes the economics more than the headline price does.
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 2026-06-25, 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.