MiniMax M3.1 Flash API Pricing
MiniMax · context window 1M · prices updated 2026-10-30
Where MiniMax M3.1 Flash sits on price
At $0.6 per million output tokens, MiniMax M3.1 Flash is a mid tier model — 3.7× cheaper than the median output price of $2.20, which puts it cheaper than 78% and pricier than 22% of the models we track. It is the cheapest of the 9 MiniMax models we track. Output costs 4.0× input, the usual spread — trim both, starting with the answer length.
Cached input is 90% cheaper. On an input-heavy workload you need roughly a 28% cache-hit rate to take 25% off the input line — reachable for chatbots and agents that resend the same system prompt and history.
What real workloads cost on MiniMax M3.1 Flash
These three workloads are the ones teams actually run on a mid-priced model — a $0.6/1M model is not bought for the same job as one ten times the price.
| Workload | Per request | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win. | $0.0016 | $23.85 |
| Document pipeline — 10K docs/day (3K in / 500 out) Batch-friendly: no user waiting, so a ~50% batch discount usually applies. | $0.0008 | $225 |
| Long-context analysis — 200 runs/day (250K in / 4K out) Only possible on large-context models; input cost is nearly the whole bill. | $0.0399 | $239 |
Model your exact traffic in the API cost calculator — it preloads MiniMax M3.1 Flash with caching and batch options.
MiniMax M3.1 Flash price history
MiniMax M3.1 Flash's price has not moved since we began tracking it on Oct 23, 2026 — 7 days of stability in a market where 102 of the 373 models we track have repriced over the same period, including 4 of MiniMax's own 9 models.
Change-points from our daily price snapshots (tracking since Oct 23, 2026; intraday moves between snapshots are not captured).
MiniMax M3.1 Flash vs Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct
The closest-priced alternative from another vendor is Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct (Alibaba (Qwen)) — priced within a rounding error on output, with identical input pricing. When two models land this close on price, the decision is quality on your own workload, not the price sheet: run 50 real requests through both and compare.
See Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct pricing →Cheaper alternatives
More MiniMax models
Frequently asked questions
› How much does the MiniMax M3.1 Flash API cost?
MiniMax M3.1 Flash costs $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.6 per million output tokens, with cached input at $0.015 per million (90% cheaper). That works out to roughly 1,666,667 output tokens per dollar.
› What does the support chatbot workload cost on MiniMax M3.1 Flash?
Support chatbot — 500 conversations/day (5K in / 1.4K out) costs about $0.0016 per request and $23.85 per month on MiniMax M3.1 Flash. Conversation history re-sent each turn — the classic prompt-caching win.
› What does it cost to fill MiniMax M3.1 Flash's 1M context window?
Sending 1M of input in a single request costs $0.1573 at $0.15 per million tokens — before any output. With prompt caching that same fill drops to about $0.0157 on repeat requests. This is why large context windows are cheap to advertise and expensive to actually use.
› Is MiniMax M3.1 Flash worth the price?
MiniMax M3.1 Flash sits in the middle of the market (1 of 9 by price within MiniMax). The honest test is a routing experiment: send the same 200 real requests to this model and to a tier below, and compare failure rate against the price gap — most teams find a majority of traffic never needed the pricier model.