Google: Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) vs MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-11-12.
| Google: Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | minimax | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 98.9 | 44.4 |
| Input Price | $1.00/M | $0.15/M |
| Output Price | $5.00/M | $0.60/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 943,718 | 524,288 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | ✓ | - |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 99.0 | 47.9 |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs $0.30 and Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) costs $2.25, so MiniMax M3.1 Flash is about 7.5 times cheaper for the same work.
Both read up to 1,048,576 tokens at once, roughly 1,573 pages of text.
Only Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) offers audio input.
On our blended benchmark score Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) leads 98.9 to 44.4.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) scores higher on 16 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others), MiniMax M3.1 Flash on 4 (Code Completion, JSON Extraction, Bulk Data Labeling and others).
Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) was released in November 2026 and MiniMax M3.1 Flash in October 2026.
Pick Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) if you need audio input, benchmark performance or the stronger all-round task scores; pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash if you need lower cost.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | Google: Gemini 4 Carbon (batch) | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 145 | 139 |
| Code Review | 150 | 141 |
| Code Completion | 120 | 132 |
| Code Refactoring | 151 | 143 |
| Bug Fixing | 154 | 145 |
| Unit Test Generation | 135 | 129 |
| Code Documentation | 139 | 136 |
| Regex Writing | 128 | 124 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 131 | 125 |
| Frontend Component Design | 133 | 127 |
| Data Analysis | 138 | 131 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 137 | 135 |
| ETL Scripting | 141 | 134 |
| JSON Extraction | 122 | 131 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 120 | 129 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 135 | 133 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 135 | 133 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 153 | 145 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 119 | 126 |
| Blog Post Writing | 133 | 127 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →