MiniMax releases M2.5, claiming the model delivers on the “intelligence too cheap to meter” promise, priced at $0.30/1M input tokens and $1.20/1M output tokens
MiniMax had already positioned its model line around developer workloads: its prior M2.1 update emphasized stronger coding capabilities, following an earlier open-source M1 release aimed at complex productivity work. M2.5 extends that arc by making price a central part of the product proposition.
The stated rates turn the release into a visible inference-cost benchmark, not just a capability claim. That matters for buyers comparing model vendors and for MiniMax as it expands support for open-source tools and builders.
First-order effects
MiniMax gives developers a published M2.5 price of $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens, lowering the stated cost hurdle for workloads that can use the model.
Buyers can add M2.5 to vendor evaluations with a clear unit-cost reference, while treating the company's “intelligence too cheap to meter” framing as a performance claim rather than an independently established result.
Second-order effects
Competing model providers face more pressure to justify higher token prices with measurable capability, reliability, tooling, or deployment advantages.
Procurement discussions shift further from headline model quality toward cost per useful task, since input and output pricing affect the economics of high-volume applications differently.
Third-order effects
If comparable capability continues to reach lower published inference prices, buyer power should rise and model vendors will have to differentiate beyond raw access to a general-purpose model.
The durable constraint may move from token price to the cost of integrating, evaluating, and operating models; low list prices alone will not determine enterprise adoption.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift from frontier-model scarcity toward competition on inference economics and demonstrable cost per useful task.
Love seeing the benchmarks out in the wild 🚀 MiniMax M2.5 was built for real-world, long-horizon agent workloads - Reliability + performance both matter. Thanks for sharing! 🙌
To be honest, I'm a bit of a skeptic of claims that models are on par with Claude/GPT, but this is definitely one that I feel is getting there. Especially for tasks that focus on code (as opposed to other things like writing, math, etc.) More in the thread above.
MiniMax-M2.5 is a surprising new step in open coding models. The first model where I've been able to independently confirm that it's better than the most recent Claude Sonnet. It showed up in our benchmarks below, and in my vibe checks it felt strong and diverse.
Zen × MiniMax M2.5 - free for a week wait what.. 2.5?! yes sir.. feels like M2.1 just dropped yesterday and now it's already M2.5?! better try it before M2.67 shows up next month
@MiniMax_AI At 230B parameters (10B active), it's also relatively lightweight for a frontier-class model. This is the size where local deployment is feasible as well. [image]
@MiniMax_AI M2.5 performed particularly well on long-running tasks like building apps from scratch, an area where smaller models have traditionally struggled. Also strong on issue resolution and software testing. [image]
@MiniMax_AI The cost-performance tradeoff is remarkable. At ~13x cheaper than Opus, M2.5 opens up use cases that weren't practical before. It's essentially a two-horse race for API-available models at the moment: Opus for max capability, M2.5 for high capability at low cost. [ima…
Big news for open models: @MiniMax_AI M2.5 is out and it's an excellent+affordable coding model. It ranks 4th in our benchmarks, the first open model to beat Claude Sonnet. Only Claude Opus and GPT-5.2 Codex score higher. Details on scores and limited-time free access below 🧵 [im…
BREAKING: MiniMax just dropped official M2.5 benchmarks and they're going HEAD TO HEAD with Opus 4.6, GPT-5.2, and Gemini 3 Pro 🤯 And Olive Song from @MiniMax_AI is joining ThursdAI LIVE in ~30 min to break it all down @ThursdAI_pod Here are the numbers 👇 [image]
MiniMax M2.5 is live now on OpenRouter! @MiniMax_AI's update to their powerful agentic model M2.1 comes with improved reliability and performance on long running tasks. It's become a powerful general agent, capable of much more than writing code. [image]
interesting thing about minimax 2.5 is it's a smaller model considering it's very usable it's a great candidate for home labs also would love to see inference providers try and max out its tokens/s can probably do something crazy [image]
Introducing M2.5, an open-source frontier model designed for real-world productivity. - SOTA performance at coding (SWE-Bench Verified 80.2%), search (BrowseComp 76.3%), agentic tool-calling (BFCL 76.8%) & office work. - Optimized for efficient execution, 37% faster at complex [i…
minimax 2.5 is now generally available and free for 7 days in opencode i'm going to try and switch to it as my default so i can get a sense of how it works golden era for opensource models right now
China won. This is another deepseek moment MiniMax 2.5 is now the best model in the world > On par with opus 4.6 > SOTA in coding, excel data analysis, deep research, document generation and summarization > Optimized thinking efficiency + 100 tps to achieve 3x faster than opus [i…
With M2.5 we're also shipping MiniMax Experts. general agents sound nice until you realize they don't know your stack, your domain, or how you actually work. now you can build experts that do. share yours, grab others'. community already made: clawbot assistant, crypto trading
🧠 Meet Expert Collection from MiniMax Agent A team of specialized AI experts — office productivity in docs, Excel, PDFs & slides, finance in research & McKinsey-style decks, and coding — working together inside MiniMax Agent. Test directly with our showcase queries or bring [vide…