Today · release October 19

MiniMax launches M3.1 Flash; cost figures are self-reported

Chinese AI model company MiniMax releases M3.1 Flash at US$0.15 per million input tokens and US$0.60 per million output tokens through its API, and self-reports a third of the cost and 3 times the speed of MiniMax's M3. MiniMax's official post lists benchmark scores for automation, coding and visual reasoning, such as 74% on DeepSWE. The table lists only MiniMax's own models, with no rivals to compare against (MiniMax, 2026-10-19). Artificial Analysis publishes independent evaluations of released models. Artificial Analysis runs a knowledge test called AA Omniscience. The X account @dummerspast39 says the test has 6,000 questions and only 600 of them are public. The account altered one public question and says only M3.1 Flash still returned the answer to the original question. On that basis the account accuses the model of memorizing public questions. The accusation rests on that one post alone (@dummerspast39, 2026-10-19). How we checked →

Concept illustration: a large billboard hangs on a beige grid-panelled building with rows of windows, split down the middle by a thin vertical line; on the left a grey-brown laptop with a speech bubble on its screen sits beside three beige circles above a black label reading "M3", and on the right a red laptop with the same speech bubble sits beside one beige circle above a black label reading "M3.1 FLASH". Below the billboard runs a black sign lettered "MINIMAX" with a white square at its right end holding a wavy red-to-purple line graphic, large windows sit beneath the sign, and a pale pink circle shows in the sky at the top right.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 20, 2026, alongside 11 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "MiniMax launches M3.1 Flash; cost figures are self-reported." https://secondsource.io/en/research/2026-10-20-1/. Accessed access date.