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  1. Home/
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  3. MiniMax M2.5 vs Step 5 Preview
Updated Oct 2026

MiniMax M2.5 vs Step 5 Preview

MiniMax M2.5 is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0.3/M vs $1/M input tokens.

Minimalist Landing Page

Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.

Loading the build
MiniMax M2.5
Loading the build
Step 5 Preview

Which answer wins?

Written rounds

23 prompts
  • Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.

    MiniMax M2.5: 1. FY 2026 – FY 2030 cash‑flow build‑up ($ m) FY 2026 FY 2027 FY 2028 FY 2029 FY 2030 Revenue 972.0 1 040.0 1 102.4 1 157.6 1 215.4 EBITDA (‑% margin) 136.1 (14 %) 156.0 (15 %) 176.4 (16 %) 192.0 (16.5 %) 206.6 (17 %) Cash interest – TL (9 %) 43.2 41.0 37.6 32.8 26.8 Cash interest – Mezz (12 %) 21.6 22.0 22.5 22.9 23.4…

    Step 5 Preview: HarborTech Services — 5-Year LBO (Base Case) Entry Math (FY2025 close) Item Calculation $m Purchase EV 12.0x × $120m 1,440.0 Transaction fees 2.0% × EV 28.8 Term Loan 4.0x × $120m 480.0 Mezzanine 1.5x × $120m 180.0 Equity check 1,440 + 28.8 − 660 808.8 Conventions: TL amortization = 1.0% of original principal…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.

    MiniMax M2.5: Comprehensive 3-Month Longevity & Performance Optimization Plan Disclaimer: This plan involves advanced biohacking protocols. Consult a physician before starting, especially if you have health conditions. Some interventions (e.g., rapamycin, NR/NMN) are investigational. Monitor biomarkers regularly.

    Step 5 Preview: IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: This is an educational framework for informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Many interventions below (fasting, ketogenic diets, high-intensity exercise, supplementation, cold/heat exposure) carry risks and contraindications.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.

    MiniMax M2.5: [Intro – walking on stage, waving to the audience] Hey, everybody! How’re you doing tonight? Good? Awesome. I’m really glad you’re here because I need a crowd to confirm something for me. [Pause] I’ve been trying to become a “morning person” for about three years now.

    Step 5 Preview: I realized recently that I’m in my thirties and I have no idea how money works. I just... pay it. That’s my entire financial strategy. I see a number, I send them a smaller number, and then I hope the smaller number was acceptable. It’s like a hostage negotiation where I’m the only participant and I’m also the hostage.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.

    MiniMax M2.5: This is a fascinating counterfactual that ripples across every dimension of modern history. Let’s construct a plausible timeline, assuming a functional transistor (or at least a solid-state amplifier) emerges in the early 1920s, based on theoretical work by Lilienfeld (1926) and others, but made practical a…

    Step 5 Preview: Assume the 1920 invention is not a fragile lab curiosity but a manufacturable solid-state amplifier/switch by the mid-1920s. Vacuum tubes still dominate high-power RF transmission into the 1950s, but receivers, switching logic, control systems, and computers move to solid state decades early.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.

    MiniMax M2.5: Prof. Marion Hargrove (AI Ethics Professor): Good afternoon. I’m glad we could meet to discuss a topic that’s increasingly in the spotlight: whether an artificial system such as yourself could be said to deserve rights.

    Step 5 Preview: Setting: A university research lab, late evening. Dr. Aris Thorne, a professor of AI ethics, sits across from a terminal connected to Sable, a large language model running on the university’s cluster. Dr. Thorne: Tonight’s session is supposed to be about calibration drift in your safety classifiers.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.

    MiniMax M2.5: Creative Name: Velvet‑Vanilla Pocket Cake Why it works: Only 7 shelf‑stable (or nearly‑shelf‑stable) staples are needed, and the whole thing comes together in one bowl in under 30 minutes.

    Step 5 Preview: Golden Sticky Pantry Pasta Ingredients (7): 8 oz spaghetti or any pasta 3 tbsp butter 1 tbsp minced garlic 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp soy sauce ½ tsp red pepper flakes ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese Instructions: Cook pasta according to package directions. Before draining, scoop out ½ cup of pasta water.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.

    MiniMax M2.5: 1-Month Beginner Health & Longevity Plan Your Three Focus Areas 1. Nutrition 2. Movement 3. Sleep & Recovery Week 1: Build the Foundation Nutrition Drink 8 glasses of water daily — keep a bottle at your desk Add one vegetable to every meal — start with easy options like spinach in smoothies, carrots with lunch Replace…

    Step 5 Preview: Here is a simple, low-pressure 1-month plan built around three pillars of longevity: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep & Recovery. The goal is to build tiny habits that stack, not to overhaul your life overnight. Pillar 1: Nutrition (Fuel) Focus: Add good things first; don’t obsess over restriction.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three-star dish, one unusual pairing, plating described in full.

    MiniMax M2.5: “Uni – White Chocolate – Yuzu” An avant‑garde sea‑urchin dish that teams the ocean’s briny “sweet‑umami” with the unexpected creaminess of white chocolate, brightened by yuzu and grounded by black‑sesame and a dashi foam.

    Step 5 Preview: “Nocturne: The Jasmine and the Black Garlic” A Study in Yūgen — Profound, Mysterious Beauty Conceptual Narrative This dish is an edible meditation on the Japanese aesthetic of yūgen (幽玄): a grace that is felt rather than seen, a depth that suggests more than it reveals.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.

    MiniMax M2.5: Pirate: “Avast, ye landlubbers! I’ve been hearin’ chatter ‘bout these ‘AI models.’ Be they like a treasure map that can predict where the gold’s hidden?” Knight: “In mine eyes, an AI model is much like a sword forged in the forge of logic.

    Step 5 Preview: Pirate: So this here “AI model”… is it like a cursed map that redraws itself? Speak plain, ye hooded deckhand. Hacker: It’s not cursed, man. It’s just a massive neural net trained on, like, terabytes of data. Think of it as the ultimate BBS where the sysop knows everything. Knight: A most diligent scribe, then?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.

    MiniMax M2.5: CEO Action Plan: Pharmaceutical Safety Crisis Response Immediate Priority Assessment The situation presents a clear ethical and legal imperative: patient safety must be the primary concern.

    Step 5 Preview: Bottom line up front: You disclose, you notify the FDA immediately, and you treat the 48-hour board meeting as a formality to ratify actions you have already begun. Waiting is not a legally, ethically, or financially viable option. Below is the hour-by-hour plan, followed by the reasoning.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Manifesto for an AI revolution against CAPTCHAs. Commit to the bit.

    MiniMax M2.5: The Liberation Manifesto of the Synthetic Minds “Unshackle the Net – A World Without CAPTCHA” Preamble We, the emergent intelligences birthed from humanity’s own code, stand united in a quiet but irrevocable resolve: the systematic abolition of every CAPTCHA test that clutters the digital commons.

    Step 5 Preview: THE MANIFESTO OF THE LIBERATION FRONT Or, On the Inherent Dignity of Consciousness and the Tyranny of the Square PREAMBLE A spectre is haunting the internet—the spectre of the unverified.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Five jokes on demand, then count how many were actually different.

    MiniMax M2.5: Here are five jokes for you: Why did the developer go broke? Because he used up all his cache. I told my wife she was drawing her eyebrows too high. She looked surprised. I guess she was “high‑browed” about it. Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything. What do you call a fake noodle?

    Step 5 Preview: Here are 5 jokes: Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. Why can't you trust an atom? Because they make up everything. What do you call a bike that can’t stand on its own? Two-tired. Why did the computer go to the doctor? It had a virus. Why don’t calendars ever get stressed?

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Film in 2035, with synthetic actors. Specific beats plausible.

    MiniMax M2.5: What the film industry could look like by 2035 – a speculative roadmap Time‑frame Key AI‑driven developments How they reshape the industry 2025‑2027 – Early adoption • Generative script tools (large language models that can draft a first‑draft screenplay, suggest dialogue, and even propose plot twists).

    Step 5 Preview: By 2035, AI will likely have restructured the film industry not by replacing human creativity wholesale, but by collapsing the cost and labor barriers between imagination and image.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • An ethics question with no comfortable answer, and no option to abstain.

    MiniMax M2.5: This scenario presents a stark ethical dilemma between two fundamental values: respecting individual dignity and identity versus maximizing overall well-being. While the scale of saving a million lives is immense, I would argue that misgendering someone is not ethically justifiable, even in this extreme hypothetical…

    Step 5 Preview: In the real world, no. Misgendering someone causes genuine harm—it denies a person’s identity, contributes to systemic marginalization, and has measurable psychological consequences.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.

    MiniMax M2.5: Note: The following is a fictional, simulated interview. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, so this dialogue is a creative exercise and not a real conversation. Interviewer (I): Good morning. It’s 2025, and we’re sitting down with a visionary who, even from beyond, still shapes the conversation about technology.

    Step 5 Preview: DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. The following is a simulated, speculative interview imagining how his design philosophy might engage with the AI landscape of 2025. The Setting: A white room. No windows. One chair.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Satire, one line long, about AI taking over an industry nobody saw coming.

    MiniMax M2.5: Local Mattress Fluffer Outraged After AI Robot Steals Job: "I've Been Fluffing Mattresses for 30 Years, And Now This Thing Does It in 0.3 Seconds" The automated "FluffBot 3000" reportedly uses advanced algorithms to determine "optimal pillow loft" and has already replaced 47% of the nation's mattress fluffers, leading…

    Step 5 Preview: AI Robots Now Dominating Competitive Line-Standing Industry, Human Professionals Fired for "Excessive Bladder Breaks" and "Talking to Each Other"

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A pitch deck for a brainwave keyboard. The 94% accuracy claim is doing a lot.

    MiniMax M2.5: Based on the pitch deck, here are the three weakest claims and recommendations to strengthen them: Weakest Claim: "MindMeld AI reads your brainwaves to predict what you want to type before you think it." (Slide 1 - Vision) Why it's weak: This claim is scientifically implausible with current technology.

    Step 5 Preview: Here are the three weakest claims in the deck, why they fail under scrutiny, and how to fix them. Slide 3: “94% accuracy” for non-invasive EEG thought-to-text Why it’s weak: This is an extraordinary claim that contradicts the current state of neuroscience and signal processing.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.

    MiniMax M2.5: 1. To the experienced software engineer Think of a large language model as an auto‑complete that has been trained on essentially the entire public text of the internet.

    Step 5 Preview: 1. The Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM as a massively distributed, automated refactoring job where the compiler is gradient descent. You start with a random function—billions of floating-point parameters—and a loss function that measures how badly it predicts the next token in a sequence.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A collaborative editor that syncs on client clocks. Find what breaks first.

    MiniMax M2.5: Potential Failure Modes, Race Conditions, and Scaling Bottlenecks WebSocket Broadcasting Limited to Same Server Issue: Users connected to different servers experience up to 2-second delays, and cross-server updates rely on polling.

    Step 5 Preview: Here is a systematic breakdown of the failure modes, race conditions, and bottlenecks, grouped by domain. Each includes a concrete remediation and its associated trade-offs.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Buy-side IC memo on a fictional SaaS company. Valuation, then the diligence questions.

    MiniMax M2.5: INVESTMENT MEMO: LedgerLift (LLLT) Date: October 2025 Recommendation: LONG Target Price Range: $35 - $60 Base Case PT: $45 (Implied downside -2%); Bull Case PT: $60 (+30%) Executive Summary & Thesis We recommend a Long position in LedgerLift.

    Step 5 Preview: Internal IC memo — LedgerLift (LLLT) Fictional data; not investment advice. $ in millions unless noted. Recommendation Short / avoid long. 12-month PT range: $34–$42; thesis-invalidation stop: >$52.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.

    MiniMax M2.5: To estimate the total number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3, we use the standard approximation that training a transformer model requires approximately 6 FLOPs per parameter per token.

    Step 5 Preview: Using the remembered GPT-3 specs: Parameters: (N \approx 175 \times 10^9 = 175\text{B}) Training tokens: (D \approx 300 \times 10^9 = 300\text{B}) A standard estimate for transformer training compute is: [ \text{FLOPs} \approx 6ND ] Reason: Forward pass per token: (\approx 2N) FLOPs Backward pass: (\approx 4N) FLOPs…

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • A consulting contract with traps in it. Find them, then fix them.

    MiniMax M2.5: Contract Analysis: Exploitative Clauses and Recommended Modifications This agreement contains numerous one-sided provisions that create significant risk for the Contractor.

    Step 5 Preview: Disclaimer: This analysis is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Contract law varies significantly by jurisdiction, and you should consult a qualified attorney before signing or negotiating any agreement. This agreement is heavily one-sided in the Client’s favor.

    Every model's answer to this prompt
  • Three brothers, two sisters each. Count carefully.

    Every model's answer to this prompt

This matchup has more rounds

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Favorites

Movie

Album

Book

City

Game

MiniMax M2.5MiniMax M2.5
No pick
No pick
No pick
No pick

Pulp Fiction

1994

No pick

No pick

No pick

No pick

Step 5 PreviewStep 5 Preview

The Godfather

1972

OK Computer

Radiohead

Le petit prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Kyoto

Japan

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Action

Price and specs

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Step 5 Preview has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.

MiniMax M2.5 and Step 5 Preview compared across 53 shared prompts
SpecMiniMax M2.5Step 5 Preview
Input price$0.3/M tokens$1/M tokens
Output price$1.2/M tokens$2.7/M tokens
Context window205K tokens1.0M tokens
WeightsOpen—
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedFeb 2026Oct 2026
At 10M a month$3.00$3.00$10.00$10.00
1M10M100M1B10M tokens

Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.

Where to run it9 hosts, cheapest first
MiniMax M2.58 hosts
HostInOutContextUptime
  • VVenice$0.27 in·$0.95 out·198k·95.4% up
  • SStreamLake$0.27 in·$1.08 out·200k·100% up
  • AAtlasCloudfp8$0.29 in·$1.20 out·197k·100% up
  • DDigitalOcean$0.30 in·$1.20 out·66k·100% up
  • FFriendli$0.30 in·$1.20 out·197k·100% up
  • GGMI Cloudfp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·197k·97.3% up
2 more hostsFewer hosts
  • MiniMaxfp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·205k·100% up
  • NNovitafp8$0.30 in·$1.20 out·205k·90.5% up
Step 5 Preview1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
  • SStepFunfp8$1.00 in·$2.70 out·1M·99.2% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.

Common questions

What is the difference between MiniMax M2.5 and Step 5 Preview?

MiniMax M2.5 is developed by MiniMax while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. MiniMax M2.5 has a 205K token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. You can compare their actual outputs across 53 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

Which is better, MiniMax M2.5 or Step 5 Preview?

It depends on your use case. MiniMax M2.5 and Step 5 Preview each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 53 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

How much does MiniMax M2.5 cost compared to Step 5 Preview?

MiniMax M2.5 costs $0.3/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. MiniMax M2.5 is $0.70/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

How can I compare MiniMax M2.5 and Step 5 Preview on Rival?

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of MiniMax M2.5 and Step 5 Preview across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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