MiniMax API Pricing (November 2026)
MiniMax API prices run from $0.15 to $1.20 per million tokens across 2 current models. The cheapest is MiniMax M3.1 Flash at $0.15 input and $0.60 output per million tokens. The flagship, MiniMax M3, costs $0.30 input and $1.20 output per million tokens. Every rate below was read on MiniMax's own pricing page, on the date shown in its row.
| Model | Input /M | Cache read /M | Output /M | Batch in /M | Batch out /M | Context | Status | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MiniMax M3.1 Flash MiniMax-M3.1-Flash | $0.15 | $0.015−90% | $0.60 | — | — | 1M | Current | 2026-10-23 |
| MiniMax M3 | $0.30 | $0.06−80% | $1.20 | — | — | 1M | Flagship | 2026-10-23 |
| MiniMax M2.7 Highspeed | $0.60 | $0.06−90% | $2.40 | — | — | 205K | Deprecated · retires Nov 18, 2026 · → MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 2026-10-28 |
| MiniMax M2.7 | $0.30 | $0.06−80% | $1.20 | — | — | 205K | Deprecated · retires Nov 18, 2026 · → MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 2026-10-28 |
| MiniMax M2.5 Highspeed | $0.60 | $0.03−95% | $2.40 | — | — | 205K | Deprecated · retires Nov 18, 2026 · → MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 2026-10-28 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | $0.30 | $0.03−90% | $1.20 | — | — | 205K | Deprecated · retires Nov 18, 2026 · → MiniMax M3.1 Flash | 2026-10-28 |
| MiniMax M1 | $0.40 | — | $2.20 | — | — | 1M | Deprecated | 2026-10-28 |
| MiniMax-01 | $0.20 | — | $1.10 | — | — | 1M | Deprecated | 2026-10-28 |
US dollars per million tokens, list rates on MiniMax's own API. Cache read is the price of a cached input token. Batch is the asynchronous API, where the vendor offers one. The date in each row is when we last read it on the vendor's pricing page; it links to that page.
MiniMax API monthly cost estimates
What light use (10M input + 2M output tokens a month), medium use (100M input + 20M output tokens a month), heavy use (1B input + 200M output tokens a month) costs on each current model, at list price with no caching and no batch discount.
| Model | Input / output per 1M | Light · 10M + 2M | Medium · 100M + 20M | Heavy · 1B + 200M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax M3.1 Flash | $0.15 / $0.60 | $2.70 | $27.00 | $270 |
| MiniMax M3 | $0.30 / $1.20 | $5.40 | $54.00 | $540 |
Prompt caching and the Batch API cut these figures; the next sections show by how much. For your own token counts, use the LLM API cost calculator.
MiniMax API price history
MiniMax API price changes and releases
Releases, the IPO, and the media-gen business. Sourced from MiniMax docs/press, the HKEX listing, and Wikipedia — verified at publication.
Retired MiniMax models and their replacements
4 MiniMax models no longer answer on MiniMax's API. The price is the last one MiniMax listed; the replacement is the current end of the vendor's own succession chain.
| Model | Status | Last price in / out per 1M | Use instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax M2.1 Highspeed | Retired Oct 28, 2026 | $0.60 / $2.40 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| MiniMax M2.1 | Retired Oct 28, 2026 | $0.30 / $1.20 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| MiniMax M2 | Retired Oct 28, 2026 | $0.30 / $1.20 | MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
| MiniMax M2-her | Retired Oct 28, 2026 | $0.30 / $1.20 | — |
platform.minimax.io — the managed API for MiniMax M3.1 Flash and M3, with pay-as-you-go pricing, prompt caching (cache reads from $0.015/M on M3.1 Flash) and a Priority tier on M3.
OPEN-WEIGHT · SELF-HOSTMiniMax publishes open weights for MiniMax-M3 and MiniMax-M2.7, with self-hosting guides on its developer site, and earlier for MiniMax-M1 and MiniMax-Text-01. M3.1 Flash weights are promised for later.
CONSUMER · MEDIAHailuo AI (video / audio / music generation) and Talkie (companion chat) are MiniMax's consumer apps — the media-gen heritage that sets it apart from text-only labs.
DeepSeek
MIT open weights at the lowest cost-per-token for reasoning. MiniMax M3.1 Flash sits in the same price band with image and video input; MiniMax's differentiator is the Hailuo media-gen business, not raw text cost.
CHINESE PEERAlibaba (Qwen)
Broad open-weight catalog with full multimodality in one family. MiniMax splits text (M-series) and media (Hailuo) into separate products.
SIX-TIGERS PEERMoonshot (Kimi)
1T-param open-weight MoE and long-context heritage. Both are Tigers chasing agentic use; MiniMax adds video/audio generation Moonshot doesn't.
SIX-TIGERS PEERZhipu (GLM)
GLM family with free tiers and strong coding integration. Zhipu leans coding/agentic text; MiniMax leans agentic text plus consumer media.
PRIMARY RIVALOpenAI
Frontier benchmarks + Sora video and a global ecosystem. OpenAI competes with MiniMax on both text and video, but at far higher text prices.
GLM ARCHITECTZhipu (Z.ai / GLM)
The Beijing lab behind the GLM models, also operating internationally as Z.ai. Spun out of Tsinghua University in 2019, Zhipu ships strong coding/agentic models, multiple free tiers, and open weights — and was the first of China's "Six Tigers" to pursue an IPO. It also sits on the US Entity List.
MiniMax API pricing FAQ
Practical questions about MiniMax's models, media gen, and data residency.
Q · 01 Which MiniMax model should I start with?
+
$0.15/$0.60, $0.015/M cache reads), released October 19, 2026, with one flat rate across a 1M-token window. MiniMax M3 ($0.30/$1.20 up to 512K) is the frontier model, with a long-context step and a Priority tier. The M2.x models are no longer on MiniMax's price list. See the use case picker above. Q · 02 What is Hailuo, and is it part of the API?
+
Q · 03 Are MiniMax models open-weight?
+
Q · 04 What's the deal with the Disney lawsuit?
+
Q · 05 Where is my data stored?
+
Q · 06 How does MiniMax compare to the other Chinese labs?
+
MiniMax (稀宇科技) was registered in Shanghai in December 2021 by Yan Junjie, who previously spent more than six years in research leadership at SenseTime. It is one of China's "Six Little Tigers" of AI, backed by Alibaba, Tencent, and HongShan.
MiniMax is unusual for spanning both text models and consumer media generation. On the text side, MiniMax M3 (June 2026) and M3.1 Flash (October 2026) are multimodal, 1M-context models priced in the budget band, and they replaced the agentic M2 family (M2.5, M2.7) on the price list; MiniMax M1 (June 2025) was the first open-weight 1M-context model. On the media side, Hailuo generates video, audio, and music, and Talkie is a popular companion-chat app launched internationally in 2023.
The company listed in Hong Kong on January 9, 2026, with shares jumping 109% on debut to a market cap above ~$12.8 billion — making Yan a billionaire and marking one of the first major "Six Tigers" IPOs. MiniMax also publishes open weights for M3, M2.7, M1 and Text-01.
One weakness to state plainly: in September 2025, Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery sued MiniMax in the US, alleging its AI-generated videos and images reproduced copyrighted studio characters — a real legal overhang on the media-gen side of the business.
The trade-offs: the M-series models read images and video but write only text (generation lives in Hailuo and the H3 video model), MiniMax retires models from its price list without notice — the M2.x family went in October 2026 with no deprecation post — the company is China-based with data stored under Chinese rules on the direct API, and US copyright litigation and export-control questions apply. Versus DeepSeek and Moonshot, MiniMax's distinctive angle is pairing cheap agentic text with a real video/audio generation business.