MiniMax M3 vs GLM 5
MiniMax M3 (released 2026-05-31) and GLM 5 (released 2026-02-11) are both built for long-horizon agent work, but they diverge hard on architecture and price. M3 is multimodal — text, image, video in — with a context window over five times larger than GLM 5's. GLM 5 is text-only but posts stronger agent benchmark results on Design Arena, including top-10 finishes in categories M3 doesn't rank in at all. Both run on OpenKey under one key with a flat 3% fee on provider pricing.
Spec vs spec
| Spec | MiniMax M3 | GLM 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 1.0M | 203K |
| Max output | 512K | — |
| Input modalities | text, image, video | text |
| Output modalities | text | text |
| Released | May 31, 2026 | Feb 11, 2026 |
| Reasoning | optional | optional |
Pricing
Per 1M tokens. Provider price plus the flat 3% fee — the sum is what you pay.
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%
z-ai/glm-5
Input · 1M tokens
$0.600 + 3%$0.618
Output · 1M tokens
$1.92 + 3%$1.98
Cache read · 1M tokens
$0.120 + 3%$0.124
FEE — FLAT, EVERY MODEL3%
One workload, priced on both
10M input + 2M output tokens at each model's price, flat 3% fee included.
minimax/minimax-m3Cheaper
$5.56
$5.40 provider + 3%
z-ai/glm-5
$10.14
$9.84 provider + 3%
Benchmarks
Design Arena categories where both models have results. Higher Elo and lower rank win.
| MiniMax M3 | GLM 5 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Elo | Rank | Elo | Rank |
| 3D | 1306 | #16 | 1307 | #15 |
| androidnative | 990 | #27 | 1244 | #6 |
| ASCII art | 1219 | #15 | 1192 | #26 |
| Code | 1306 | #13 | 1295 | #16 |
| Data viz | 1295 | #11 | 1269 | #22 |
| Game dev | 1287 | #20 | 1299 | #15 |
| SVG | 1250 | #13 | 1225 | #19 |
| UI components | 1291 | #18 | 1287 | #21 |
| Websites | 1304 | #11 | 1290 | #18 |
Head-to-head preference voting. How we filter and rank
Pricing math
Provider list price: MiniMax M3 is $0.30/M input, $1.20/M output, with cache reads at $0.06/M. GLM 5 is $0.60/M input, $1.92/M output, cache reads at $0.12/M — exactly double M3 on the input side (input_price_ratio: 0.5). On OpenKey, the 3% fee applies on top: M3 comes to $0.309/M input and $1.236/M output; GLM 5 comes to $0.618/M input and $1.9776/M output.
For a concrete workload — 10M input tokens, 2M output tokens — M3 costs $5.40 total versus GLM 5's $9.84. That's nearly 2x for the same workload, and it compounds fast if you're running high-volume agent loops or batch jobs.
Agentic and coding performance
GLM 5 has a real edge on Design Arena's agent-specific categories: rank 6 in Android-native agents (elo 1244, 62% win rate), rank 13 in fullstack agents (elo 1190), rank 3 in Godot game dev agents (elo 1237, 54.8% win rate), and rank 10 in mobile app agents (elo 1222). MiniMax M3 only shows agent-category data for Android-native, ranking 27th (elo 990, 20.6% win rate) — a clear gap.
Artificial Analysis scores M3 separately: 44.4 intelligence index, 58.6 coding index, 35.4 agentic index. Those aren't directly comparable to GLM 5's Design Arena numbers, but the agentic index (35.4) lines up with M3's weaker agent-category showing on Design Arena. On raw model-category benchmarks (codecategories, dataviz, website) the two are close — GLM 5 ranks 16, 22, 18 versus M3's 13, 11, 11 — so M3 edges ahead on general coding categories even as GLM 5 dominates agents.
Context and long-document work
MiniMax M3 supports 1,048,576 tokens of context and up to 512,000 tokens of output — GLM 5 caps at 202,752 context with no separate max-output figure listed. That's a 5.17x context ratio in M3's favor. If your workload involves ingesting large codebases, long transcripts, or multi-document RAG contexts in a single pass, M3 has meaningfully more room before you need to chunk or summarize.
Modality differences
MiniMax M3 accepts text, image, and video as input and returns text. GLM 5 is text-in, text-out only. If your pipeline needs to reason over screenshots, video frames, or mixed-media input directly, M3 is the only option of the two — GLM 5 would require a separate vision step.
When to pick each
Pick GLM 5 when the job is agent-driven: coding agents operating on Android-native, fullstack, Godot, or mobile app tasks, where it consistently outranks M3. Pick MiniMax M3 when you need multimodal input, a much larger context window, or lower cost per token on high-volume runs. Both support the same tool-calling and structured-output parameters (tools, tool_choice, response_format, structured_outputs), so switching between them for testing is a config change, not a rewrite.
Which model for which job
| Use case | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| High-volume agent coding loops | GLM 5 | Ranks #6 (Android-native) and #3 (Godot) on Design Arena agent benchmarks, categories where M3 barely places |
| Long-document or large-codebase analysis | MiniMax M3 | 1,048,576-token context is 5.17x GLM 5's 202,752 |
| Cost-sensitive batch processing | MiniMax M3 | $5.40 vs $9.84 for a 10M-input/2M-output workload on OpenKey |
| Image or video input pipelines | MiniMax M3 | Only model of the two with image and video input modalities |
| Mobile app agent development | GLM 5 | Rank 10 on Design Arena's mobileapps agent category (elo 1222, 53.1% win rate) |
| General website/UI code generation | MiniMax M3 | Ranks 11th on website category vs GLM 5's 18th |
Questions
- Which is cheaper, MiniMax M3 or GLM 5?
- MiniMax M3, by roughly half on input tokens: $0.309/M on OpenKey versus GLM 5's $0.618/M. Output is $1.236/M for M3 versus $1.9776/M for GLM 5. On a 10M-input/2M-output workload, that's $5.40 for M3 versus $9.84 for GLM 5.
- Which model has a bigger context window?
- MiniMax M3, with 1,048,576 tokens versus GLM 5's 202,752 — a 5.17x difference. M3 also supports up to 512,000 tokens of output, while GLM 5 has no separate max-completion figure listed.
- Which model is better for coding agents?
- GLM 5 ranks higher on Design Arena's agent-specific categories: #6 in Android-native agents and #3 in Godot game dev agents. MiniMax M3 ranks 27th in the one agent category it has data for (Android-native), so GLM 5 is the stronger pick for agent-driven coding work.
- Can I use both models through one API key?
- Yes — both MiniMax M3 and GLM 5 run on OpenKey, so you get one key across both with a flat 3% fee added to each provider's list price, no separate accounts or billing per lab.