# Claude Sonnet 5 vs MiniMax M3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and MiniMax M3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: September 29, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 11
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 5 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 Sonnet 5 leads overall 66.99 to 54.8.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 78.4 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 52 for MiniMax M3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) in Agentic, with scores of 74.5% and 53.6%.
- MiniMax M3 is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | MiniMax M3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 66.99 | 54.8 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 27 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | $0.30 / $1.20 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.6 (Supported · #12/117)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 39.7 (Supported · #56/117)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 66.0% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | 83.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | 70.1% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 53.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | Coming soon | 74.5% | Coming soon |
| BankerToolBench | Coming soon | 76.1% | Coming soon |
| ResearchClawBench | Coming soon | 19.8% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 4.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 59.8 (Supported · #19/142)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 38.8 (Supported · #65/142)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | 80.5% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 59% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 80.4% | 66.0% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 82.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 75.0% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | 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: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.7 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 79.4 (#5/27)

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 78.4 (#15/50)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 52 (#37/50)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 45.1% | 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 Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64.5 (Supported · #26/168)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 48.3 (Supported · #67/168)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 92.7% | MiniMax M3 |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 84.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 92.4 (#5/124)

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| USAMO 2026 | Coming soon | 85.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or MiniMax M3?

Claude Sonnet 5 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and MiniMax M3?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 78.4 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 52 for MiniMax M3.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 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 Sonnet 5 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [MiniMax M3 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-minimax-m3)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-minimax-m3)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [MiniMax M3 profile](/models/minimax-m3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)