China's Flash twins clash: MiniMax M3.1 Flash lands two days after DeepSeek's
新智元 · wechat · 2026-10-19
Just two days after DeepSeek's V4.1 Flash-1017, MiniMax released M3.1 Flash, forming a domestic "Flash twin" rivalry. Key numbers:
- Coding: 73.7% on DeepSWE v1.1 (max), beating GPT-5.6 Sol (73.0%) at under ¥2 per task—Claude Opus 5 costs ¥70+ for similar scores, 40x more.
- Agents: 62.8 on Zapier's Automation-Bench (600 real enterprise tasks), #1 overall, 12 points above Opus 5; ¥0.25 per task on medium, ¥300 for 1,000 cross-SaaS tasks.
- Computer use: 61.7 on OSWorld 2.0 (vs Kimi K3's 58.3); full 152-task ALE run costs only ¥739 at 29.6% pass rate—cheaper models above it start at ¥1,600, with Opus/GPT-6 tier bills over ¥7,000.
- Speed & pricing: 200+ TPS (up from 100+ on M3), ¥1/M input and ¥4/M output flat-rate, 70% lower comprehensive agent costs.
Hands-on tests included an Inception-style folding-city 3D webpage via Codex and a pagoda generated in one 50K-token API call. The official CLI now defaults to M3.1 Flash; a Pro version targeting higher capability is coming. The piece argues Flash models are taking over tasks once reserved for flagships, with DeepSeek stronger on SWE and MiniMax on enterprise workflows and financial tool use.
Related event: MiniMax Releases M3.1 Flash: 3x Faster, One-Third the Cost of M3(26 posts)→
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