Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo vs MiniMax-M2: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo and MiniMax-M2 on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. MiniMax-M2 has the stronger average benchmark score; MiniMax-M2 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
MiniMax-M2 is a multimodal model from MiniMax. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $5.19 per million input tokens and $22.73 per million output tokens, and averages 80.6 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.19 / 1M
- Output
- $22.73 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 80.6
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo | MiniMax-M2 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.37 | $5.19 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $54.76 | $22.73 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 200,000 | Tie |
| Max output | 32,768 | 65,536 | B |
| Average score | 80.0 | 80.6 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1434.5 | 1423.8 | A |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo wins 4, MiniMax-M2 wins 8, 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 | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.6 | 81.8 | 1.2 | MiniMax-M2 |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.1 | 75.4 | 0.3 | MiniMax-M2 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 68.4 | 69.9 | 1.5 | MiniMax-M2 |
| HumanEval | 87.0 | 88.0 | 1.0 | MiniMax-M2 |
| MATH-500 | 83.7 | 82.3 | 1.4 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 79.2 | 78.1 | 1.1 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 71.7 | 73.4 | 1.7 | MiniMax-M2 |
| IFEval | 87.1 | 86.1 | 1.0 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
| TruthfulQA | 81.0 | 83.5 | 2.5 | MiniMax-M2 |
| HellaSwag | 88.1 | 90.4 | 2.3 | MiniMax-M2 |
| MMMU | 77.7 | 78.0 | 0.3 | MiniMax-M2 |
| Arena Elo | 1434.5 | 1423.8 | 10.7 | Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo |
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 costs about $9.57. MiniMax-M2 is roughly 61% 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.
Both models list a 200,000-token context window. That is enough for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo wins 4, MiniMax-M2 wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, MiniMax-M2 leads Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo by 0.6 points (80.6 versus 80.0).
The price picture favours MiniMax-M2. The context picture is effectively a tie. 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 MiniMax-M2 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo if
- You prefer Anthropic's tooling or already use it.
Choose MiniMax-M2 if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo better than MiniMax-M2?
On the index average, MiniMax-M2 leads Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo by 0.6 points (80.6 versus 80.0). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo wins 4 benchmarks, MiniMax-M2 wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo or MiniMax-M2?
MiniMax-M2 is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $9.57 per million tokens, versus $24.47 for Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
Both models list a 200,000-token context window.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Haiku 4.5 Turbo is proprietary; MiniMax-M2 is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with MiniMax-M2 for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.