MiniMax is a Shanghai-based AI company that IPO’d in Hong Kong in January 2026. Their M2.7 model delivers roughly 90% of Claude Opus 4.6’s coding quality at 1/50th the price — $0.30 per million input tokens vs Claude’s $15.
Key facts
- Founded: 2021, Shanghai
- IPO: January 2026 (Hong Kong Stock Exchange)
- Flagship model: MiniMax M2.7 (230B MoE, 10B active)
- Pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per 1M tokens (input/output)
- SWE-Pro score: 56.22% (competitive with frontier models)
- Speed: ~100 tokens/second
The model lineup
| Model | Released | Params | Best for | Price (input) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M2.7 | Mar 2026 | 230B MoE (10B active) | Agentic coding, reasoning | $0.30/1M |
| M2.5 | Feb 2026 | 230B MoE | Coding (80.2% SWE-bench) | $0.15/1M |
| M2 | Earlier | — | General tasks | Cheaper |
Why MiniMax matters
For developers: M2.7 at $0.30/1M input tokens is 50x cheaper than Claude Opus and 33x cheaper than GPT-5.4. For routine coding tasks, the quality difference is barely noticeable.
The self-evolving angle: M2.7 is marketed as “the first AI model to actively participate in its own evolutionary process.” It uses multi-agent collaboration to plan, execute, and refine complex tasks.
Architecture: 230B total parameters with only 10B active per token (4.3% activation rate). 256 local experts, 8 activated per token, 62 layers. This extreme sparsity is how they keep costs so low.
How it compares
| MiniMax M2.7 | Claude Opus 4.6 | DeepSeek Chat | GLM-5.1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.30/1M | $15.00/1M | $0.27/1M | $1.00/1M |
| Quality | ~90% of Opus | Best | ~85% of Opus | ~95% of Opus |
| Speed | 100 tok/s | 50 tok/s | 60 tok/s | 55 tok/s |
| Context | 200K | 200K | 128K | 200K |
MiniMax and DeepSeek are the two cheapest frontier-class options. DeepSeek is slightly cheaper, MiniMax is slightly faster.
How to access MiniMax
- MiniMax API — Direct access at api.minimax.chat
- OpenRouter —
minimax/minimax-m2.7(one API key for all models) - Aider —
aider --model openrouter/minimax/minimax-m2.7 - OpenCode — via OpenRouter provider
See our MiniMax API guide for code examples and our MiniMax M2.7 Complete Guide for full details.
How to use MiniMax
Available through:
- MiniMax API directly
- OpenRouter —
minimax/minimax-m2.7 - Aider — via OpenRouter
- OpenCode — via API
See our MiniMax M2.7 Complete Guide for setup instructions.
Related: MiniMax M2.7 Complete Guide · MiniMax M2.7 vs Claude vs DeepSeek · Best Open-Source Coding Models 2026