Head-to-head comparison across 3benchmark categories. Overall scores shown here use BenchLM's provisional ranking lane.
MiniMax M3
76
Qwen3.5 397B
63
Verified leaderboard positions: MiniMax M3 #12 · Qwen3.5 397B #19
Pick MiniMax M3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5 397B only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority.
Agentic
+15.7 difference
Coding
+6.7 difference
Multimodal
+14.7 difference
MiniMax M3
Qwen3.5 397B
$0.3 / $1.2
$0.6 / $3.6
N/A
96 t/s
N/A
2.44s
1M
128K
Pick MiniMax M3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Qwen3.5 397B only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority.
MiniMax M3 is clearly ahead on the provisional aggregate, 76 to 63. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
MiniMax M3's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 71.9 against 56.2. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is BrowseComp, 83.5% to 62%. Qwen3.5 397B does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Qwen3.5 397B is also the more expensive model on tokens at $0.60 input / $3.60 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.30 input / $1.20 output per 1M tokens for MiniMax M3. That is roughly 3.0x on output cost alone. MiniMax M3 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 128K for Qwen3.5 397B.
MiniMax M3 is ahead on BenchLM's provisional leaderboard, 76 to 63. The biggest single separator in this matchup is BrowseComp, where the scores are 83.5% and 62%.
MiniMax M3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 67 versus 60.3. Inside this category, SWE-bench Pro 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 56.2. Inside this category, MCP Atlas is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Qwen3.5 397B has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 79.6 versus 64.9. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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