MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash vs Google: Gemini 4 Argon (batch)
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-23.
| MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Google: Gemini 4 Argon (batch) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | minimax | |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Benchmark Score | 71.3 | 90.2 |
| Input Price | $0.15/M | $1.00/M |
| Output Price | $0.60/M | $5.00/M |
| Context Window | 1,048,576 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 524,288 | 943,718 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | ✓ |
| Benchmark Scores | ||
| ai_index | 70.5 | 86.7 |
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 Argon (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 Argon (batch) offers audio input.
On our blended benchmark score Gemini 4 Argon (batch) leads 90.2 to 71.3.
Across the 20 tasks where they differ, MiniMax M3.1 Flash scores higher on 4 (Code Completion, JSON Extraction, Bulk Data Labeling and others), Gemini 4 Argon (batch) on 16 (SQL Generation, Code Review, Code Refactoring and others).
Pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash if you need lower cost; pick Gemini 4 Argon (batch) if you need audio input, benchmark performance or the stronger all-round task scores.
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 | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash | Google: Gemini 4 Argon (batch) |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 142 | 143 |
| Code Review | 145 | 148 |
| Code Completion | 133 | 120 |
| Code Refactoring | 147 | 149 |
| Bug Fixing | 149 | 152 |
| Unit Test Generation | 132 | 134 |
| Code Documentation | 138 | 138 |
| Regex Writing | 126 | 127 |
| CI/CD Pipelines | 128 | 130 |
| Frontend Component Design | 130 | 132 |
| Data Analysis | 134 | 137 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 136 | 136 |
| ETL Scripting | 137 | 140 |
| JSON Extraction | 131 | 122 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 129 | 120 |
| OCR / Document Parsing | 134 | 135 |
| Table Extraction from PDFs | 134 | 135 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 149 | 151 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 127 | 119 |
| Blog Post Writing | 130 | 131 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →