Minimax Anthropic-compatible
Chinese AI lab whose M2.5 series targets coding agents at low cost.
⚠️Heads up: The Lightning (high-speed, ~100 tok/s) variant of M2.5 is gated to the -Highspeed tiers only (Plus-Highspeed $40/mo, Max-Highspeed $80/mo, Ultra-Highspeed $150/mo). The cheaper Starter / Plus / Max plans give you regular M2.5 at ~50 tok/s — make sure you subscribe to a -Highspeed tier if you specifically need Lightning.
MiniMax (Hailuo AI) is a Beijing-based AI lab. Its M2.5 model hits 80.2% on SWE-Bench Verified at a fraction of frontier prices, and the M2.5-Lightning variant trades a touch of accuracy for ~100 tok/s sustained throughput. Sold either pay-per-token or via flat-rate Token Plan subscriptions starting at $10/mo.
Strengths
- Built-in prompt caching, no manual setup
- Anthropic wire format: works as a Claude Code drop-in
- Token Plan subscriptions starting at $10/mo
When to use it
- Coding agents that want Claude semantics on a flat-rate plan
- Workloads where the Lightning variant's throughput matters
- High-volume agentic loops
Subscription plans
| Plan | Price | Quota | Available |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $10/mo | 100 prompts / 5h, M2.5 | yes |
| Plus | $20/mo | 300 prompts / 5h, M2.5 | yes |
| Max | $50/mo | 1,000 prompts / 5h, M2.5 | yes |
| Plus-Highspeed | $40/mo | 300 prompts / 5h, Lightning | yes |
| Max-Highspeed | $80/mo | 1,000 prompts / 5h, Lightning | yes |
| Ultra-Highspeed | $150/mo | 2,000 prompts / 5h, Lightning | yes |
Notes: Annual billing ≈ -17%. M2.7 plans (separate quotas) include speech, image and music.
Referral: MiniMax has a Co-builder referral program: invitees get 10% off their first Coding Plan, you get 10% bonus API credits (90-day vouchers, stackable). Generate your link in the platform and replace `signup_url` with it.
Models tested on Minimax
Speed numbers below are specific to Minimax's routing and hardware. The same model may appear on other providers' pages with different throughput.
| Model | Best tok/s | Avg tok/s | Runs | Success | Longest output (chars) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax-M2.1 | 167.0 | 153.2 | 3 | 100% | 2,079 |
| MiniMax-M2.5 | 159.0 | 122.0 | 3 | 100% | 2,062 |
| MiniMax-M2 | 71.3 | 67.2 | 3 | 100% | 2,068 |
| MiniMax-M2.5-highspeed | 48.1 | 43.9 | 3 | 100% | 2,175 |
| MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed | 45.0 | 43.8 | 3 | 100% | 2,661 |
| MiniMax-M2.7 | 26.4 | 25.7 | 3 | 100% | 1,713 |