Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo vs MiniMax-M2 Instruct: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo and MiniMax-M2 Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo has the stronger average benchmark score; MiniMax-M2 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $14.37 per million input tokens and $54.76 per million output tokens, and averages 80.0 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.37 / 1M
- Output
- $54.76 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 80.0
- Open weights
- No
MiniMax-M2 Instruct
MiniMax-M2 Instruct is a multimodal model from MiniMax. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $5.11 per million input tokens and $25.04 per million output tokens, and averages 79.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.11 / 1M
- Output
- $25.04 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 79.4
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo | MiniMax-M2 Instruct | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.37 | $5.11 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $54.76 | $25.04 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 128,000 | A |
| Max output | 32,768 | 4,096 | A |
| Average score | 80.0 | 79.4 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1434.5 | 1442.2 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo wins 7, MiniMax-M2 Instruct wins 5, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo | MiniMax-M2 Instruct | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.6 | 82.1 | 1.5 | MiniMax-M2 Instruct |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.1 | 73.7 | 1.4 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| SWE-bench Verified | 68.4 | 69.9 | 1.5 | MiniMax-M2 Instruct |
| HumanEval | 87.0 | 86.7 | 0.3 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 83.7 | 82.1 | 1.6 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 79.2 | 77.8 | 1.4 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 71.7 | 71.1 | 0.6 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| IFEval | 87.1 | 87.3 | 0.2 | MiniMax-M2 Instruct |
| TruthfulQA | 81.0 | 80.0 | 1.0 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 88.1 | 88.5 | 0.4 | MiniMax-M2 Instruct |
| MMMU | 77.7 | 74.1 | 3.6 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| Arena Elo | 1434.5 | 1442.2 | 7.7 | MiniMax-M2 Instruct |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo costs about $24.47 per million tokens and MiniMax-M2 Instruct costs about $10.09. MiniMax-M2 Instruct is roughly 59% cheaper than Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for MiniMax-M2 Instruct. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo wins 7, MiniMax-M2 Instruct wins 5, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo leads MiniMax-M2 Instruct by 0.6 points (80.0 versus 79.4).
The price picture favours MiniMax-M2 Instruct. The context picture favours Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo for quality-sensitive work and MiniMax-M2 Instruct for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- You need the larger 200,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 32,768-token output limit.
Choose MiniMax-M2 Instruct if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo better than MiniMax-M2 Instruct?
On the index average, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo leads MiniMax-M2 Instruct by 0.6 points (80.0 versus 79.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo wins 7 benchmarks, MiniMax-M2 Instruct wins 5.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo or MiniMax-M2 Instruct?
MiniMax-M2 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $10.09 per million tokens, versus $24.47 for Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens. MiniMax-M2 Instruct has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; MiniMax-M2 Instruct is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo for quality-sensitive work and MiniMax-M2 Instruct for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.