Head-to-head comparison across 1benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking
59
MiniMax M3
76
Verified leaderboard positions: Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking unranked · MiniMax M3 #13
Pick MiniMax M3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
Coding
+2.9 difference
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking
MiniMax M3
N/A
$0.3 / $1.2
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
128K
1M
Pick MiniMax M3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking only becomes the better choice if coding is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.
MiniMax M3 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 76 to 59. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking is the reasoning model in the pair, while MiniMax M3 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. MiniMax M3 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking.
MiniMax M3 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 76 to 59.
Mellum2-12B-A2.5B-Thinking has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 69.9 versus 67. MiniMax M3 stays close enough that the answer can still flip depending on your workload.
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