Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Claude Sonnet 4.6
83
MiniMax M3
76
Verified leaderboard positions: Claude Sonnet 4.6 unranked · MiniMax M3 #12
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M3 only becomes the better choice if agentic is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Agentic
+6.8 difference
Coding
+0.6 difference
Multimodal
+12.5 difference
Claude Sonnet 4.6
MiniMax M3
$3 / $15
$0.3 / $1.2
44 t/s
N/A
1.48s
N/A
200K
1M
Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M3 only becomes the better choice if agentic is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 83 to 76. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Claude Sonnet 4.6's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 77.4 against 64.9. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is Terminal-Bench 2.0, 59.1% to 66%. MiniMax M3 does hit back in agentic, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.30 input / $1.20 output per 1M tokens for MiniMax M3. That is roughly 12.5x on output cost alone. MiniMax M3 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 200K for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 83 to 76. The biggest single separator in this matchup is Terminal-Bench 2.0, where the scores are 59.1% and 66%.
MiniMax M3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 67 versus 66.4. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
MiniMax M3 has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 71.9 versus 65.1. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Claude Sonnet 4.6 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 77.4 versus 64.9. MiniMax M3 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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