Llama 4 Maverick vs MiniMax M3
Both models ship a 1,048,576-token context window and both accept image input, but that's where the similarity ends. Llama 4 Maverick (Meta, released April 2025) is a mixture-of-experts model priced for volume. MiniMax M3 (released May 2026) adds video input, a much larger 512,000-token max output, and benchmark scores that put it in a different performance tier entirely. The choice comes down to whether your workload needs M3's reasoning and coding capability or just needs cheap throughput.
Spec vs spec
| Spec | Llama 4 Maverick | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 1.0M | 1.0M |
| Max output | 16K | 512K |
| Input modalities | text, image | text, image, video |
| Output modalities | text | text |
| Knowledge cutoff | Aug 31, 2024 | — |
| Released | Apr 5, 2025 | May 31, 2026 |
| Reasoning | — | optional |
Pricing
Per 1M tokens. Provider price plus the flat 3% fee — the sum is what you pay.
meta-llama/llama-4-maverick
Input · 1M tokens
$0.150 + 3%$0.154
Output · 1M tokens
$0.600 + 3%$0.618
FEE — FLAT, EVERY MODEL3%
minimax/minimax-m3
Input · 1M tokens
$0.300 + 3%$0.309
Output · 1M tokens
$1.20 + 3%$1.24
Cache read · 1M tokens
$0.060 + 3%$0.062
FEE — FLAT, EVERY MODEL3%
One workload, priced on both
10M input + 2M output tokens at each model's price, flat 3% fee included.
meta-llama/llama-4-maverickCheaper
$2.78
$2.70 provider + 3%
minimax/minimax-m3
$5.56
$5.40 provider + 3%
Benchmarks
Design Arena categories where both models have results. Higher Elo and lower rank win.
| Llama 4 Maverick | MiniMax M3 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Elo | Rank | Elo | Rank |
| 3D | 976 | #91 | 1306 | #16 |
| Code | 929 | #102 | 1306 | #13 |
| Data viz | 926 | #100 | 1295 | #11 |
| Game dev | 903 | #103 | 1287 | #20 |
| UI components | 955 | #94 | 1291 | #18 |
| Websites | 914 | #105 | 1304 | #11 |
Head-to-head preference voting. How we filter and rank
Pricing math on a real workload
For a 10M input / 2M output token job: Llama 4 Maverick costs $2.70 on OpenKey, MiniMax M3 costs $5.40 — exactly double. That tracks the raw provider pricing: Maverick is $0.15/M input and $0.60/M output versus M3's $0.30/M input and $1.20/M output. On OpenKey, both get the flat 3% fee applied on top of provider list price: Maverick's $0.15/$0.60 becomes $0.1545/$0.618, and M3's $0.30/$1.20 becomes $0.309/$1.236. M3 also has a $0.06/M cache-read price, which Maverick doesn't offer at all — useful if you're doing repeated-context agent loops. Both models run through the same OpenKey key, so switching between them for cost-testing is a one-line change, not a new account.
Coding and agentic performance
This is the biggest gap in the data. Artificial Analysis puts MiniMax M3's coding index at 58.6 against Maverick's 16.3 — more than a 3.5x difference. The agentic index gap is even starker: 35.4 for M3 versus 1.3 for Maverick. On Design Arena's coding-adjacent categories, M3 ranks 13th in codecategories (elo 1306) while Maverick ranks 102nd (elo 929). If you're building a coding agent, a tool-calling pipeline, or anything that needs multi-step planning, Maverick isn't in the running here — the benchmark gap is too large to close with prompting.
Modality and context differences
Both models handle text and image input at the same 1,048,576-token context length — a dead heat there, context ratio 1.0. But M3 also takes video input, which Maverick can't do at all. M3's max output is 512,000 tokens versus Maverick's 16,384 — a 31x difference — which matters if you need the model to generate long documents, large codebases, or extended agent transcripts in one call rather than chunking across requests. Maverick's tokenizer is Llama4-specific; M3 uses a different, unlisted tokenizer family, so token counts won't translate directly between the two if you're estimating costs by character count.
When to pick each
Pick Maverick when the task is high-volume and low-difficulty: bulk summarization, tagging, simple image captioning, or any pipeline where you're processing millions of tokens and the marginal quality difference doesn't change the outcome. Pick M3 when the task requires actual reasoning quality — coding, agents, multi-turn tool use, or long-form generation past 16K tokens. Given M3's intelligence index (44.4) is roughly 3x Maverick's (14.3), paying double per token is usually the cheaper option once you count retries and human review time on Maverick's weaker outputs.
Which model for which job
| Use case | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Coding assistant / agent | MiniMax M3 | Coding index 58.6 vs 16.3, agentic index 35.4 vs 1.3 |
| High-volume bulk text processing | Llama 4 Maverick | Half the price per token: $2.70 vs $5.40 for a 10M-in/2M-out job |
| Video-input tasks | MiniMax M3 | Only M3 accepts video input; Maverick supports text+image only |
| Long single-call generation (>16K tokens out) | MiniMax M3 | Max output 512,000 tokens vs Maverick's 16,384 |
| Repeated-context agent loops needing cache pricing | MiniMax M3 | M3 offers $0.06/M cache-read pricing; Maverick has none listed |
| Simple image captioning at scale | Llama 4 Maverick | Lower per-token cost with no material quality need for M3's reasoning tier |
Questions
- Is MiniMax M3 worth double the price of Llama 4 Maverick?
- For coding or agentic work, yes — M3's coding index is 58.6 versus Maverick's 16.3, and its agentic index is 35.4 versus 1.3. For bulk low-complexity text tasks where a 10M-in/2M-out job costs $2.70 on Maverick versus $5.40 on M3, the price gap isn't justified by the task.
- Do both models support the same context length?
- Yes, both have a 1,048,576-token context window — a context ratio of exactly 1.0. The real difference is max output: Maverick caps at 16,384 tokens per response while M3 can output up to 512,000 tokens in one call.
- Can I use both models through one API key?
- Yes. Both Llama 4 Maverick and MiniMax M3 run on OpenKey with a single key across all 329 models, and pricing is the provider's list price plus a flat 3% fee — no separate accounts or contracts needed to compare them.
- Which model handles video input?
- Only MiniMax M3. Its input modalities are text, image, and video. Llama 4 Maverick is limited to text and image input, with text-only output for both models.