Neither wins outright: Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 is the pick when you need file / PDF input, MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) when cost matters at scale.
| Spec | Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Minimax |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.10 | $0 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.50 | $0 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.20 | $0 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 69% | 90% |
| Context window | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) | 1M tokens (~1,500 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 69% | 69% |
| Max output per response | 128K tokens (~96,000 words) | 524K tokens (~393,200 words) |
| Input types | text, image, file | text, image, video |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | Yes |
| Listed since | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-19 |
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $17.50 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $17.50 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $17.00 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $17.00 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $18.00 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $18.00 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $11.00 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $11.00 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $5.50 | $0 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) saves $5.50 |
| Capability | Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | ✓ Yes | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | ✓ Yes | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | — | — | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | — | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
Neither wins outright: Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 is the pick when you need file / PDF input, MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) when cost matters at scale. In short: Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 when you need file / PDF input, you need built-in web search; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) when cost matters at scale, you generate long outputs in one go, you want to prototype at zero cost.
MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) is cheaper: $0 vs $0.20 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 100% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $0 against $17.50.
Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 costs $0.10 per 1M input tokens and $0.50 per 1M output tokens; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) costs $0 input and $0 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Both take 1M tokens per request — roughly 1,500 pages of text.
Tool calling — Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5: yes, MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free): yes. JSON-schema structured output — Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5: yes, MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free): yes.
Yes, both accept image input.
MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) has a free variant (minimax/minimax-m3.1-flash:free). Free variants usually carry tighter rate limits.
Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 can write up to 128K tokens (about 96,000 words) per response; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) up to 524K (about 393,200 words).
Anthropic: Claude Haiku 5.5 was listed on 2026-10-07; MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) on 2026-10-19.
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