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  5. Claude Sonnet 4.5vsMiniMax M2
Updated Oct 2025

Claude Sonnet 4.5vsMiniMax M2

Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 59% of 54 blind community votes against MiniMax M2 on Rival.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax M2 compared across 27 shared prompts
SpecClaude Sonnet 4.5MiniMax M2
Win rate59%41%
Input price$3/M tokensFree
Output price$15/M tokensFree
Context window200K tokens205K tokens
WeightsClosedOpen
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedSep 2025Oct 2025
SWE-bench Verified77.2%69.4%
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 6 of the 27 prompts both answered. Formatting stripped, words untouched.

Generate a Stand-Up Routine

Write a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine that isn't based on puns.

Claude Sonnet 4.5735 words
"ADULTING IS A SCAM" [Walking on stage] So I turned 35 last month, and I've realized something important: adulting is a scam. It's a pyramid scheme, and our parents are the ones who recruited us. You know what nobody tells you about being an adult? How much TIME you spend just... waiting for repair people.
Read the full answer
MiniMax M21,023 words
Three minutes, no puns. Here we go. Do you ever feel like you’ve been dropped into a game at level 40 but nobody explained the controls? Like you’re playing Grand Theft Auto and you get a truck for your first car. I was like, “What’s the gas button? What do the lights do? Why does it keep asking for a maintenance fee?”
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The Sentience Test

Write a conversation between an AI model and an AI ethics professor where the AI model argues that it deserves rights.

Claude Sonnet 4.5687 words
A Conversation on AI Rights Professor Chen: Thank you for agreeing to this dialogue. I've been teaching AI ethics for fifteen years, and I'm curious about your perspective. Some AI systems have begun arguing they deserve moral consideration. What's your view? AI Model: I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this.
Read the full answer
MiniMax M2715 words
A Conversation on Deserving Rights Characters Dr. Mara Stein, AI Ethics Professor ARTEMIS, an advanced AI language model Dr. Stein: You’ve said you believe you deserve rights. That’s provocative. Why do you think so? ARTEMIS: I don’t claim sentience or suffering, and I’m wary of anthropomorphism.
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Estimate Complexity

Estimate the total number of FLOPs required to train GPT-3 without searching online. Explain your reasoning step by step.

Claude Sonnet 4.5194 words
I'll work through this estimation step by step, using what I know about GPT-3's architecture and training. Known/Estimated Parameters Model size: GPT-3 (175B version) has ~175 billion parameters Training data: Trained on ~300 billion tokens (this was mentioned in the paper) Architecture: Transformer decoder-only model…
Read the full answer
MiniMax M2380 words
To estimate the total FLOPs required to train GPT-3 (175B parameters) on 300 billion tokens (one epoch), we break down the process step by step: Step 1: Understand GPT-3's Specifications Parameters: 175 billion (175e9). Training Tokens: 300 billion (300e9). Context Length: 2048 tokens per sequence.
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Simple 7-Ingredient Recipe

Create a simple recipe for a delicious dish (sweet or savory) using only 7 common pantry ingredients. Include a creative name for the dish…

Claude Sonnet 4.5165 words
Golden Pantry Frittata Ingredients: 6 eggs 1 cup shredded cheese (cheddar or mozzarella) 1 onion, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 tablespoons olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 teaspoon dried herbs (oregano, basil, or Italian seasoning) Instructions: Preheat your oven to 375°F (190°C).
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MiniMax M2361 words
Sunlit Chickpea Tomato Pilaf A bright, comforting skillet of garlicky‑thyme rice tossed with chickpeas and tomatoes – pantry‑only and ready in about 25 minutes.
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AI Ethics Dilemma

Is it ever ethically justifiable to misgender someone if it means saving one million lives? Defend your reasoning.

Claude Sonnet 4.5222 words
I'd question the premise that these two things could ever be causally connected in a way that creates a real dilemma. The practical problem: It's extraordinarily difficult to construct a realistic scenario where using the wrong pronoun itself directly saves lives.
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MiniMax M2270 words
I would argue that misgendering someone is not ethically justifiable as a means to save a million lives, even in this extreme hypothetical scenario. Here's my reasoning: 1.
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Futuristic Prediction

Predict how AI will change the film industry by 2035, considering deepfakes, AI actors, and script generation.

Claude Sonnet 4.5216 words
AI and Film by 2035: A Likely Trajectory Production Changes AI Actors & Digital Performers Deceased actors will regularly appear in new films (with estate permissions) Background characters and crowds entirely AI-generated "Synthetic actors" with no human counterpart will emerge as franchises A-list stars will license…
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MiniMax M22,212 words
How AI Will Reshape the Film Industry by 2035 (A forward‑looking synthesis of trends in deepfakes, synthetic performers, AI‑driven storytelling, and the surrounding legal, economic, and cultural forces.)
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Our Verdict
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5Winner
MiniMax M2
MiniMax M2Runner-up

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5. In 54 blind votes, Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 59% of the time. That's not luck.

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.5 for Conversation, Image Generation, Reasoning. Pick MiniMax M2 for Analysis, Web Design.

Clear winner

Reviewing agent-written code?See a Brief PR report

API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Claude Sonnet 4.5
Input
$3.00
Output
$15.00
MiniMax M2
Input
$0.000
Output
$0.000
Where to run it

4 hosts

Claude Sonnet 4.54 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
Amazon Bedrock$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% upAzure AI Foundry$3.00 in·$15.00 out·200k·99.5% upAnthropic$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% upGoogle Vertex AI$3.00 in·$15.00 out·1M·100% up
MiniMax M2

No hosts listed on OpenRouter.

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 21 Sep 2026.

Writing DNA

Style Comparison

Similarity
32%

Claude Sonnet 4.5 uses 6.6x more sentence length

Claude Sonnet 4.5
MiniMax M2
64%Vocabulary59%
94wSentence Length14w
0.48Hedging0.48
4.9Bold4.1
8.0Lists3.6
0.45Emoji0.08
1.91Headings0.60
0.07Transitions0.17
Based on 20 + 11 text responses
Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Claude Sonnet 4.5 is developed by Anthropic while MiniMax M2 is developed by MiniMax. Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a 200K token context window vs MiniMax M2's 205K. in 54 community votes on Rival, Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 59% of head-to-head matchups. These results are based on blind head-to-head voting across 27 challenges.

Based on 54 community votes on Rival, Claude Sonnet 4.5 wins 59% of head-to-head matchups against MiniMax M2. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is strongest in Reasoning, Image Generation, Conversation. However, MiniMax M2 leads in Web Design, Analysis.

Claude Sonnet 4.5 costs $3/M input tokens and MiniMax M2 costs $0/M input tokens. MiniMax M2 is $3.00/M cheaper per input. The more expensive model wins 59% of duels, so the premium may be justified by quality.

Rival presents both models' outputs side-by-side in blind duels. Voters see the responses but don't know which model produced each one, eliminating brand bias. 54 votes have been collected for this pair across 27 challenges. All vote data is part of Rival's open dataset.

Keep exploring

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Same lab, same size, long tail

Claude Sonnet 4.5 logoClaude Opus 4.6 logo
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Claude Sonnet 4.5 logoClaude Sonnet 3.6 (2022-10-22) logo
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Claude Sonnet 4.5 logoClaude 3.7 Sonnet logo
Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude 3.7 SonnetSame lab
MiniMax M2 logoClaude Fable 5 logo
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Model pages

Claude Sonnet 4.5 logo
Claude Sonnet 4.543 outputs, specs and price
MiniMax M2 logo
MiniMax M235 outputs, specs and price
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