---
id: "2026-06-01-minimax-m3"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-01-minimax-m3/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2026-06-01"
date_precision: day
category: model-release
importance: 3
confidence: medium
status: [Partly confirmed]
sources: 4
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-06-01-minimax-m3/

# MiniMax M3: open-weights 428B MoE with 1M context and native multimodality

MiniMax released M3 on 2026-06-01 (open weights on Hugging Face 2026-06-02): a ~428B-parameter MoE (~23B active) with MiniMax Sparse Attention, a 1M-token context and native image/video input, aimed at agentic coding at very low prices; it was followed by the H3 video model (07-31) and Music-3.0 (07-16).

## Key facts
- ~428B total / ~23B active parameters; 1M-token context (third-party write-ups)
- Reported SWE-bench Verified 80.5% and SWE-Bench Pro 59.0% (vendor claims via secondary sources)
- Price: $0.28/M input, $1.10/M output (OpenRouter-listed)
- Follow-ups per MiniMax release notes: Music-3.0 (2026-07-16), H3 omni-modal video model with native stereo audio (2026-07-31)

## What happened

MiniMax, which listed in Hong Kong in January 2026, shipped M3 as its flagship coding/agent model. Official release notes list the M2.5 (Feb), M2.7 (Mar 18, "beginning the journey of recursive self-improvement") and M3 (Jun 1) cadence,
then the H3 video model on 2026-07-31 ("understands creative intent across multimodal context — text, image, video, and audio").

## Why it matters

M3 made 1M context + native multimodality + frontier-ish coding available as open weights at ~1/20th of Western frontier prices.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 32 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): 62 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 1 day after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [MiniMax API docs: model release notes](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/release-notes/models) (platform.minimax.io, official)
2. [OpenRouter: MiniMax M3](https://openrouter.ai/minimax/minimax-m3) (openrouter.ai, docs)
3. [Fireworks: MiniMax M3 is live](https://fireworks.ai/blog/minimax-m3-launch) (fireworks.ai, press)
4. [DataNorth: MiniMax launches M3](https://datanorth.ai/news/minimax-launches-m3) (datanorth.ai, press)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2026-01-08: [Zhipu AI and MiniMax become first LLM labs to go public (Hong Kong)](https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-01-08-zhipu-minimax-hong-kong-ipos/index.md)