# dots3-note Preview vs MiniMax M3

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for dots3-note Preview and MiniMax M3 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-minimax-m3
- Last updated: September 28, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.7

## Quick Verdict

Pick dots3-note Preview 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

- dots3-note Preview leads overall 62.64 to 54.78.
- The clearest category separation is in agentic, where the averages are 56.4 for dots3-note Preview and 39.7 for MiniMax M3.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 in Agentic, with scores of 75.1% and 66.0%.
- dots3-note Preview is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- MiniMax M3 also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Dots Studio | MiniMax |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 512K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 62.64 | 54.78 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 31 | 27 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $0.00 / $0.00 | $0.30 / $1.20 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Directional only
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 56.4 (Estimated · #28/117)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 39.7 (Supported · #56/117)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Claw-Eval | 73.4% | 74.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | 66.0% | dots3-note Preview |
| Toolathlon-Verified | 55.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| skillsBench | 52.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| APEX-Agents | 30.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 83.3% | 83.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| HLE w/ tools | 52.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| DeepSearchQA | 92.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | 78.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | Coming soon | 70.1% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 74.2% | 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 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | Coming soon | 53.6% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 38.7 (Supported · #65/142)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Codeforces | 3056.0 | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench v6 | 91.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 75.1% | 66.0% | dots3-note Preview |
| SWE-bench Verified | 78.4% | 80.5% | MiniMax M3 |
| SWE Multilingual | 75.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 61% | 59% | dots3-note Preview |
| NL2Repo | 49.8% | 42.1% | dots3-note Preview |
| 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 |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | Coming soon | 82.2% | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | Coming soon | 75.0% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 72.9 (Unranked · 1 rankable row)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 79.4 (#5/27)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 81.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 67.2 (Unranked · 10 rankable rows)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 52 (#37/50)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SimpleVQA | 72.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | 79.1% | 78.1% | dots3-note Preview |
| MathVision | 87.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | 19.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 83.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GDP.pdf (no tools) | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | 53.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | 50.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMVU | 79.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | 86.8% | 84.6% | dots3-note Preview |
| OfficeQA Pro | Coming soon | 45.1% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 91.6% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 85.4% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 48.3 (Supported · #67/168)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 52.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | Coming soon | 92.7% | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | Coming soon | 84.2% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Directional only
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: 85.2 (#37/124)
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: 92.4 (#5/124)

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| IFEval | 93.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- dots3-note Preview public-lane score: Coming soon
- MiniMax M3 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | dots3-note Preview | MiniMax M3 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IMOAnswerBench | 90.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| USAMO 2026 | Coming soon | 85.7% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, dots3-note Preview or MiniMax M3?

dots3-note Preview is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between dots3-note Preview and MiniMax M3?

The widest category gap is in agentic, where the averages are 56.4 for dots3-note Preview and 39.7 for MiniMax M3.

### How many benchmarks does dots3-note Preview cover on BenchLM?

dots3-note Preview currently has 31 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

- [dots3-note Preview vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/dots3-note-preview-vs-gpt-6-astra)
- [MiniMax M3 vs GPT-6 Astra](/compare/gpt-6-astra-vs-minimax-m3)
- [dots3-note Preview vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-dots3-note-preview)
- [MiniMax M3 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-minimax-m3)

## Explore More

- [dots3-note Preview profile](/models/dots3-note-preview)
- [MiniMax M3 profile](/models/minimax-m3)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)