Minimax M3 vs Qwen 3.5 Plus: cost comparison
Prices updated 2026-10-28 · computed from live provider data
Short answer: Minimax M3 is cheaper on a
3:1 input/output blend — $0.525 per million tokens versus
$0.675, a 22% difference.
Minimax M3 offers the larger context window at 1,048,576 tokens, against 1,000,000 for Qwen 3.5 Plus.
Head to head
| Minimax M3 | Qwen 3.5 Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Input, per 1M tokens | $0.300 | $0.300 |
| Output, per 1M tokens | $1.20 | $1.80 |
| Blended 3:1, per 1M | $0.525 | $0.675 |
| Context window | 1,048,576 | 1,000,000 |
| Vendor | minimax | qwen |
Monthly cost at real volumes
| Workload (input / output) | Minimax M3 | Qwen 3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| 1M in / 250K out | $0.600 | $0.750 |
| 10M in / 2.5M out | $6.00 | $7.50 |
| 100M in / 25M out | $60.00 | $75.00 |
Which should you pick?
Pick Minimax M3 when you need the longer context window (1,048,576 vs 1,000,000 tokens). Pick Minimax M3 when price per token dominates your workload — high-volume classification, extraction, or batch summarisation.