What is the difference between Claude Sonnet 4.5 and MiniMax M2?

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.

Which is better, Claude Sonnet 4.5 or MiniMax M2?

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.

How much does Claude Sonnet 4.5 cost compared to MiniMax M2?

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.

How are Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs MiniMax M2 votes collected on Rival?

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.

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
Spec	Claude Sonnet 4.5	MiniMax M2
Win rate	59%	41%
Input price	$3/M tokens	Free
Output price	$15/M tokens	Free
Context window	200K tokens	205K tokens
Weights	Closed	Open
Free API (OpenRouter)	No	No
Released	Sep 2025	Oct 2025
SWE-bench Verified	77.2%	69.4%