MiniMax releases M3.1 Flash, claiming 70% lower costs for AI agent tasks

MiniMax released M3.1 Flash on October 19, 2026, pairing lower-priced AI agent work with claimed gains in coding, computer operation and cybersecurity. The company says task usage costs are 70% below its predecessor’s and online inference is nearly three times faster. Access is live through MiniMax’s services; downloadable model weights will follow later.

Token prices versus the cost of finishing work

The launch offers two different cost measures. MiniMax publishes flat rates for input, output and cached input, all charged per million tokens. Separately, it says the overall usage cost for agentic tasks—work involving multiple steps and tool calls—is 70% lower than its predecessor’s. That is a claim about running tasks, not a stated 70% reduction in each listed token rate.

$0.15Input

MiniMax’s listed rate for input supplied to M3.1 Flash.

$0.60Output

MiniMax’s listed rate for output generated by the model.

$0.015Cached input

MiniMax lists cached input as a separate, lower-priced category.

On speed, MiniMax says everyday output can exceed 200 tokens per second, with median speeds consistently above 170. These figures describe output generation, while the company’s capability tests examine whether the model can carry out work. MiniMax attributes its inference-efficiency gains to more aggressive sparsity, and describes the overall online inference improvement as nearly threefold.

The capability case rests on multi-step tasks

MiniMax’s benchmark results span several kinds of work rather than one general score. The company says M3.1 Flash ranks among the top performers on AutomationBench-AA, which tests complex task automation. It also describes enterprise workflows across software services, including sales, marketing, operations, customer service, finance and HR. Those are MiniMax’s capability claims, not independently validated outcomes.

• Financial and tool-based work: MiniMax reports 76.2 on BankerToolBench. It highlights multi-step planning, consistency across documents and files, financial compliance, and sequences of tool calls as areas of strength.
• Software engineering: The company reports 73.7% on DeepSWE v1.1. That benchmark covers understanding code, developing features, fixing problems and checking the work through tests, rather than simply producing a code snippet.
• Computer operation: MiniMax reports 61.7 points on OSWorld V2, which measures computer use and tasks across applications. It also reports 29.6 on Agents’ Last Exam, a test of professional work and complex tasks.

Cybersecurity adds a different measure: MiniMax reports 82% on CyberGym, which it connects to vulnerability discovery and validation. Its internal security experts also evaluated code auditing, vulnerability patching, penetration testing, malware analysis and reverse engineering. The published CyberGym score and those internal assessments are distinct pieces of the company’s case for using the model in security work.

Service access now, model files later

M3.1 Flash is available through the MiniMax API, M Plan and MiniMax Code. The announcement directs developers to its API platform and offers a desktop download for MiniMax Code. These are the launch’s immediate access routes. MiniMax says model weights—the files needed to run the model separately—will be released later, without giving a release date.

The release also identifies an earlier anonymous version. MiniMax says Space Bunny was an early M3.1 Flash model and processed more than 200 trillion tokens while operating anonymously. That disclosure connects the named launch to an earlier deployment, but the volume figure describes usage; it is separate from the benchmark results offered to support the model’s capabilities.