Claude Haiku 4.5 vs MiniMax M2.5

Pricing: an 8x gap on input tokens

Claude Haiku 4.5 costs $1.00/M input and $5.00/M output from Anthropic; on OpenKey that's $1.03/M and $5.15/M after the 3% fee ($1.00 x 1.03, $5.00 x 1.03). MiniMax M2.5 costs $0.12/M input and $0.48/M output from the provider, or $0.1236/M and $0.4944/M on OpenKey ($0.12 x 1.03, $0.48 x 1.03). That's an input price ratio of 8.33x in MiniMax's favor. Run the numbers on a 10M-input / 2M-output workload and Haiku 4.5 comes to $20.00 while M2.5 comes to $2.16 — a difference that compounds fast if you're running batch jobs or high-frequency agent loops. Haiku 4.5 also offers cache read at $0.10/M and cache write at $1.25/M, which MiniMax doesn't expose, so repeated-context workloads on Claude get cheaper than the headline rate suggests.

Coding and agentic benchmarks

On Design Arena, MiniMax M2.5 outranks Claude Haiku 4.5 in every category both models share. In codecategories, M2.5 ranks 29th (elo 1256, 56.8% win rate) versus Haiku 4.5's rank 63 (elo 1164, 44.8%). In website generation, M2.5 ranks 26th (elo 1265, 57.5% win rate) against Haiku 4.5's rank 64 (elo 1164, 45%). The gap holds across svg, gamedev, dataviz, uicomponent, and 3d — M2.5 leads on elo and win rate in each. Haiku 4.5 does have Artificial Analysis scores where M2.5 has none reported: an intelligence index of 29.6, coding index of 43.9, and agentic index of 16.4, useful if you want a general capability reference rather than a head-to-head design benchmark.

Context, output limits, and modality

Context windows are close: Claude Haiku 4.5 offers 200,000 tokens versus MiniMax M2.5's 204,800, a context ratio of 0.98 — not a deciding factor either way. Max output diverges more: Haiku 4.5 caps at 64,000 completion tokens, M2.5 at 196,608, over 3x more headroom for long generations like full codebases or extended agent transcripts. Modality is the real fork: Haiku 4.5 accepts text, image, and file input and outputs text; MiniMax M2.5 is text-to-text only. If your pipeline needs to read screenshots, PDFs, or other file uploads, M2.5 is off the table regardless of its price and benchmark lead.

When to pick each

Pick MiniMax M2.5 for coding agents, website/UI generation, and any high-volume task where the Design Arena numbers and the $2.16-vs-$20.00 cost gap matter. Its `reasoning_effort` and `parallel_tool_calls` parameters, plus mandatory reasoning mode, suit structured agentic pipelines. Pick Claude Haiku 4.5 when you need multimodal input (images, files), Anthropic's `top_k`/`tool_choice` parameter set, or you're already standardized on Claude's behavior and want a faster, cheaper Claude rather than switching labs. Neither model is free on OpenKey; both bill through the same key with the flat 3% fee on top of provider list price.

Questions

Which model is cheaper for a typical 10M input / 2M output workload?

MiniMax M2.5, at $2.16 total versus $20.00 for Claude Haiku 4.5. That's the computed cost using each model's OpenKey pricing: M2.5 at $0.1236/M input and $0.4944/M output, Haiku 4.5 at $1.03/M input and $5.15/M output.

Does MiniMax M2.5 beat Claude Haiku 4.5 on coding benchmarks?

Yes, on every shared Design Arena category. In codecategories M2.5 ranks 29th (elo 1256) versus Haiku 4.5's rank 63 (elo 1164). In website generation M2.5 ranks 26th (elo 1265) versus Haiku 4.5's rank 64 (elo 1164).

Can MiniMax M2.5 process images or files?

No. MiniMax M2.5 is text-to-text only. Claude Haiku 4.5 accepts text, image, and file input, so it's the only option of the two for multimodal pipelines.

How do context windows compare?

Nearly identical: Claude Haiku 4.5 has a 200,000-token context window and MiniMax M2.5 has 204,800, a ratio of 0.98. Max output differs more sharply — 64,000 tokens for Haiku 4.5 versus 196,608 for M2.5.