# Claude Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax M3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Opus 4.8 and MiniMax M3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: October 15, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 16
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Opus 4.8 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M3 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Opus 4.8 leads overall 70.05 to 54.94.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 91.2 for Claude Opus 4.8 and 61.5 for MiniMax M3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is OfficeQA Pro in Multimodal & Grounded, with scores of 66.2% and 45.1%.
- MiniMax M3 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 70.05 | 54.94 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 40 | 27 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $5.00 / $25.00 | $0.30 / $1.20 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 63.5 (Supported · #19/126)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 39.4 (Supported · #67/126)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 21.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | 66.0% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| BrowseComp | 84.3% | 83.5% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| DeepSearchQA | 93.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 83.4% | 70.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Finance Agent v2 | 53.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | 82.2% | 74.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Toolathlon | 59.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 72.97% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | 21.1% | 19.8% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 20.6% | 4.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 71.9% | 53.6% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 74.5% | Coming soon |
| BankerToolBench | Coming soon | 76.1% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 60.7 (Supported · #19/149)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 36.5 (Supported · #73/149)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 88.6% | 80.5% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 69.2% | 59% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE Multilingual | 84.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 38.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 74.6% | 66.0% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| cursorBench31 | 58.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CursorBench 3.2 | 62.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 46.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 87.8% | 82.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 88.6% | 75.0% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| PostTrainBench v1.1 | 32.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 42.1% | Coming soon |
| VIBE V2 | Coming soon | 50.1% | Coming soon |
| SVG-Bench | Coming soon | 63.7% | Coming soon |
| KernelBench Hard | Coming soon | 28.8% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 48.4% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 62.8 (#25/29)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 82.9 (#5/29)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 72.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-3 | 1.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 92.50% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 91.2 (#5/54)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 61.5 (#43/54)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| OfficeQA Pro | 66.2% | 45.1% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| ScreenSpot Pro | 87.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv | 89.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 80.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.6% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 78.1% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 84.6% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 85.4% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Claude Opus 4.8
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 71.8 (Supported · #15/182)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 49.6 (Supported · #81/182)

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 93.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | 93.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 57.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 49.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 92.4% | 92.7% | MiniMax M3 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 89.6% | 84.2% | Claude Opus 4.8 |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| INCLUDE | 87.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 75.4 (#63/146)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 93.8 (#5/146)

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Opus 4.8 public-lane score: 84.4 (#1/12)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| USAMO 2026 | 96.7% | 85.7% | Claude Opus 4.8 |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | 80.000% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | 56.098% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Opus 4.8 or MiniMax M3?

Claude Opus 4.8 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Opus 4.8 and MiniMax M3?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 91.2 for Claude Opus 4.8 and 61.5 for MiniMax M3.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Opus 4.8 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Opus 4.8 currently has 40 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does MiniMax M3 cover on BenchLM?

MiniMax M3 currently has 27 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Opus 4.8 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-claude-opus-5-5)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-minimax-m3)
- [Claude Opus 4.8 vs GPT-6.1 Sol](/compare/claude-opus-4-8-vs-gpt-6-1-sol)
- [MiniMax M3 vs GPT-6.1 Sol](/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-vs-minimax-m3)

## Explore More

- [Claude Opus 4.8 profile](/models/claude-opus-4-8)
- [MiniMax M3 profile](/models/minimax-m3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)