Claude Haiku 4.5 vs MiniMax-M2 Chat: which model should you choose?
We compared Claude Haiku 4.5 and MiniMax-M2 Chat on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. MiniMax-M2 Chat has the stronger average benchmark score; MiniMax-M2 Chat is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Claude Haiku 4.5
Claude Haiku 4.5 is a multimodal model from Anthropic. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $13.86 per million input tokens and $74.67 per million output tokens, and averages 79.4 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.86 / 1M
- Output
- $74.67 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 79.4
- Open weights
- No
MiniMax-M2 Chat
MiniMax-M2 Chat is a multimodal model from MiniMax. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $5.02 per million input tokens and $18.95 per million output tokens, and averages 80.2 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.02 / 1M
- Output
- $18.95 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 80.2
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Claude Haiku 4.5 | MiniMax-M2 Chat | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.86 | $5.02 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $74.67 | $18.95 | B |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 200,000 | A |
| Max output | 128,000 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 79.4 | 80.2 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1421.8 | 1443.0 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Claude Haiku 4.5 wins 4, MiniMax-M2 Chat wins 8, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | MiniMax-M2 Chat | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.1 | 84.3 | 0.2 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| GPQA Diamond | 74.1 | 77.8 | 3.7 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| SWE-bench Verified | 69.2 | 66.4 | 2.8 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| HumanEval | 84.7 | 84.2 | 0.5 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| MATH-500 | 81.4 | 86.0 | 4.6 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| AIME 2025 | 76.5 | 78.3 | 1.8 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| LiveCodeBench | 71.6 | 70.4 | 1.2 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| IFEval | 85.2 | 88.0 | 2.8 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| TruthfulQA | 79.6 | 80.3 | 0.7 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| HellaSwag | 89.6 | 87.8 | 1.8 | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
| MMMU | 77.6 | 79.2 | 1.6 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| Arena Elo | 1421.8 | 1443.0 | 21.2 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Claude Haiku 4.5 costs about $29.06 per million tokens and MiniMax-M2 Chat costs about $8.50. MiniMax-M2 Chat is roughly 71% cheaper than Claude Haiku 4.5. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Claude Haiku 4.5 has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for MiniMax-M2 Chat. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Claude Haiku 4.5 wins 4, MiniMax-M2 Chat wins 8, and 0 are tied. On the index average, MiniMax-M2 Chat leads Claude Haiku 4.5 by 0.8 points (80.2 versus 79.4).
The price picture favours MiniMax-M2 Chat. The context picture favours Claude Haiku 4.5. 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 Chat for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 128,000-token output limit.
Choose MiniMax-M2 Chat if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- 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 better than MiniMax-M2 Chat?
On the index average, MiniMax-M2 Chat leads Claude Haiku 4.5 by 0.8 points (80.2 versus 79.4). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Claude Haiku 4.5 wins 4 benchmarks, MiniMax-M2 Chat wins 8.
Which is cheaper, Claude Haiku 4.5 or MiniMax-M2 Chat?
MiniMax-M2 Chat is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $8.50 per million tokens, versus $29.06 for Claude Haiku 4.5.
Which has the larger context window?
Claude Haiku 4.5 has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. MiniMax-M2 Chat has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Claude Haiku 4.5 is proprietary; MiniMax-M2 Chat is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with MiniMax-M2 Chat for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.