ERNIE 4.5 Turbo vs MiniMax-M2 Chat: which model should you choose?
We compared ERNIE 4.5 Turbo 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.
ERNIE 4.5 Turbo
ERNIE 4.5 Turbo is a multimodal model from Baidu. It offers a 128,000-token context window, costs $13.75 per million input tokens and $54.36 per million output tokens, and averages 79.7 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $13.75 / 1M
- Output
- $54.36 / 1M
- Context
- 128,000
- Avg score
- 79.7
- 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 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo | MiniMax-M2 Chat | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $13.75 | $5.02 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $54.36 | $18.95 | B |
| Context window | 128,000 | 200,000 | B |
| Max output | 32,768 | 8,192 | A |
| Average score | 79.7 | 80.2 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1419.8 | 1443.0 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
ERNIE 4.5 Turbo wins 6, MiniMax-M2 Chat wins 6, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo | MiniMax-M2 Chat | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 84.0 | 84.3 | 0.3 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| GPQA Diamond | 73.0 | 77.8 | 4.8 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| SWE-bench Verified | 67.5 | 66.4 | 1.1 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo |
| HumanEval | 86.4 | 84.2 | 2.2 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo |
| MATH-500 | 86.4 | 86.0 | 0.4 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo |
| AIME 2025 | 80.7 | 78.3 | 2.4 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo |
| LiveCodeBench | 70.5 | 70.4 | 0.1 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo |
| IFEval | 85.2 | 88.0 | 2.8 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| TruthfulQA | 82.5 | 80.3 | 2.2 | ERNIE 4.5 Turbo |
| HellaSwag | 87.0 | 87.8 | 0.8 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| MMMU | 73.7 | 79.2 | 5.5 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
| Arena Elo | 1419.8 | 1443.0 | 23.2 | MiniMax-M2 Chat |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, ERNIE 4.5 Turbo costs about $23.90 per million tokens and MiniMax-M2 Chat costs about $8.50. MiniMax-M2 Chat is roughly 64% cheaper than ERNIE 4.5 Turbo. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
MiniMax-M2 Chat has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens, compared with 128,000 for ERNIE 4.5 Turbo. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 Turbo wins 6, MiniMax-M2 Chat wins 6, and 0 are tied. On the index average, MiniMax-M2 Chat leads ERNIE 4.5 Turbo by 0.5 points (80.2 versus 79.7).
The price picture favours MiniMax-M2 Chat. The context picture favours MiniMax-M2 Chat. 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 ERNIE 4.5 Turbo if
- You need the larger 32,768-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 the larger 200,000-token context window.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is ERNIE 4.5 Turbo better than MiniMax-M2 Chat?
On the index average, MiniMax-M2 Chat leads ERNIE 4.5 Turbo by 0.5 points (80.2 versus 79.7). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. ERNIE 4.5 Turbo wins 6 benchmarks, MiniMax-M2 Chat wins 6.
Which is cheaper, ERNIE 4.5 Turbo or MiniMax-M2 Chat?
MiniMax-M2 Chat is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $8.50 per million tokens, versus $23.90 for ERNIE 4.5 Turbo.
Which has the larger context window?
MiniMax-M2 Chat has the larger context window at 200,000 tokens. ERNIE 4.5 Turbo has 128,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
ERNIE 4.5 Turbo 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.