LOADING DATASHEET
GROUNDED IN REAL HUMAN CONVERSATIONSYOUR BENCH
MiniMax M3
◆ OPEN
by MiniMax
OPEN WEIGHTSLOCALAPILONG CONTEXTPAIDREASONING
RANKED #117 OF 337 ASSISTANTS · OVERALL #187 OF 528 RANKED · VIBE SCORE 6.0 · 640 VOICES
COPY BADGE pastes a README snippet with the rank SVG.
MiniMax-M3 is a multimodal foundation model from MiniMax. It supports text, image, and video inputs with text output, a 1M-token context window, and is suited for long-horizon agentic work, coding,...
HAPPY8.6
78 mentions
SAD6.4
34 mentions
VIBE TRAJECTORY
26 weeks · 870 voices
QUIETLY DEGRADING
Recent vibe and chatter are both sliding.
HOW TO USE IT
Open weights. You can use a hosted service, or download it and run it yourself, free.
RUN IT ON YOUR OWN MACHINE
Open weights: download MiniMax M3 once and it's yours. No subscription, no rate limits, works offline.
428B total parameters (23B active MoE), a 4-bit quant is about 208 to 265 GB
- BARE MINIMUM
Apple Mac Studio M2 Ultra with 192 GB Unified Memory
192 GB UNIFIED MEMORY
~$5,500 NEW / $4,200Experimental 1-bit/2-bit GGUF (UD-IQ1_M or UD-IQ2_XXS), ~5 to 10 tok/s, 8k context. Too big for single consumer GPUs
- SWEET SPOT
Dual AMD Instinct MI300X or 2x NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Workstati
192 TO 384 GB VRAM
~$16,000 USEDINT4 / MXFP4 quant, ~20 to 30 tok/s, 32k to 64k context
- FULL POWER
4x NVIDIA H100 SXM5 Server Node
320 GB VRAM
~$120,000 SERVER BUILDFP8 / BF16 precision, 40+ tok/s, up to 1M context
LEARN HOW TO SET IT UP
WILL MY BOX RUN MINIMAX M3?
The three cards above are researched picks. Search the machine you actually have — we only say yes if it should reply at a usable speed, not just load the weights and crawl.
HARDWARE PICKS & PRICES ARE RESEARCHED FROM THE LIVE WEB AND REFRESHED AUTOMATICALLY. TREAT THEM AS BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT CAN YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT?
Everyday jobs on each of those rigs: how long MiniMax M3 takes, and how good the crowd says it is at that kind of work.
| THE JOB | BARE MINIMUMApple Mac Studio M2 Ultra with 192 GB Unified Memory | SWEET SPOTDual AMD Instinct MI300X or 2x NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Workstati | FULL POWER4x NVIDIA H100 SXM5 Server Node |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write an emaila paragraph or two, drafted from a one-line brief | ~67 S★★★★★ | ~20 S★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Summarize a documenta long report boiled down to the points that matter | ~3.3 MIN★★★★★ | ~60 S★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Build a websitea small landing page, markup and styles together | ~18 MIN★★★★★ | ~5.3 MIN★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Build a backendan API with routes, storage and tests | ~56 MIN★★★★★ | ~17 MIN★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
| Build a gamea playable browser game in one file | ~33 MIN★★★★★ | ~10 MIN★★★★★ | —★★★★★ |
STARS ARE THE COMMUNITY SCORE FOR THAT KIND OF WORK, DOCKED FOR HOW SQUASHED THE WEIGHTS GET AT EACH TIER. A DASH MEANS NO SPEED WAS RESEARCHED FOR THAT RIG. TIMES ARE COMPUTED FROM RESEARCHED SPEEDS. BALLPARK, NOT GOSPEL.
WHAT THE INTERNET SAYS
The internet is split on MiniMax M3. Biggest praise: price. Biggest gripe: saying no too much.
544 POSTS · 96 COMMENTS · REDDIT · GITHUB · X · BLUESKY · DEV.TO · LEMMY · DEV FORUMS · BLOG
PEOPLE LOVE
- People feel it is worth the money (10 mentions)
- Popular for coding help (7 mentions)
PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT
- Refuses or lectures more than people like (9 mentions)
TOPIC BY TOPIC
- PricePEOPLE LOVE THIS
10 thumbs up · 2 thumbs down
- Help with codeMOSTLY POSITIVE
7 thumbs up · 3 thumbs down
- Saying no too muchA SORE SPOT
0 thumbs up · 9 thumbs down
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
- FROM GITHUB >
“config(seats): Nish lane refresh — cheapest+best of Qwen3.8/GLM5.3/DSv4 flash on openrouter+zenmux; free MiniMax M3 via commandcode/opencode.”
LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE?
Checked picks first: tags say why you would switch, stars say how fully each one stands in for MiniMax M3.
Gemini 3.7 Flash
Grok 4.6
Qwen3.8 27B> SOURCES (12)
- REDDIT · 2026-07-03 · 572 UPVOTESUh.. Honey, how do you feel about takeout?
Uh.. Honey, how do you feel about takeout?
- REDDIT · 2026-07-19 · 320 UPVOTESPlease god, please there will be a smaller variant that also come with it
Please god, please there will be a smaller variant that also come with it
- REDDIT · 2026-06-12 · 286 UPVOTESMiniMax M3 is out now!
MiniMax M3 is out now!
- REDDIT · 2026-07-26 · 134 UPVOTESMinimax M3 support with MSA has been merged into llama.cpp
Minimax M3 support with MSA has been merged into llama.cpp
- REDDIT · 2026-07-11 · 112 UPVOTESAbout Xiaomi and their censoring hiccup
About Xiaomi and their censoring hiccup
- REDDIT · 2026-06-25 · 112 UPVOTESDeepseek V4 pro vs Minimax M3. Judge is Opus 4.8. Results are disappointing
Deepseek V4 pro vs Minimax M3. Judge is Opus 4.8. Results are disappointing
- REDDIT · 2026-06-01 · 108 UPVOTESMinimax M3 has been released
Minimax M3 has been released
- REDDIT · 2026-06-25 · 107 UPVOTESPlotPoints NSFW RP Voting Arena Now Live! (SFW version updated) 40 models up from 21; please go vote!
PlotPoints NSFW RP Voting Arena Now Live! (SFW version updated) 40 models up from 21; please go vote!
- REDDIT · 2026-06-01 · 103 UPVOTESMiniMax M3 launched!
MiniMax M3 launched!
- REDDIT · 2026-08-13 · 100 UPVOTESGemini Flash 3.7 is at 50% discount on OpenRouter
Gemini Flash 3.7 is at 50% discount on OpenRouter
- REDDIT · 2026-06-17 · 58 UPVOTESWhy doesn’t GitHub Copilot support open-weight models now that pricing is token-based?
Why doesn’t GitHub Copilot support open-weight models now that pricing is token-based?
- REDDIT · 2026-08-11 · 50 UPVOTESHow are you all speeding up Minimax M3 generations?
How are you all speeding up Minimax M3 generations?