AIREITEROn July 17, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, MiniMax put a model called M3.1 on stage. A month later, there is still nowhere official to buy it: no launch post on the MiniMax blog, no model ID in the API pricing docs, no listing on OpenRouter.
MiniMax M3.1 is real as an announcement, but as of August 18, 2026, the MiniMax model you can call, download, or pay for is still M3 — now at a permanently halved API price.
What MiniMax Actually Announced at WAIC 2026
Each specific M3.1 claim traces back to the WAIC event itself, not to a technical report, model card, or pricing page. The announcement centers on two improvements over M3: markedly stronger native multimodality and a "million-level" context window said to read an entire project's documentation and code repository in one pass. Positioning also shifted from coding agents toward enterprise work: industrial manufacturing, supply-chain collaboration, and engineering.
"Its native multimodal capabilities have improved especially noticeably… million-level long context can fully understand an entire project's documents and code repository." — tech blogger IT 九熙, posting from WAIC via Sina News, July 17, 2026
The same Sina report describes the WAIC booth running M3-powered AI headphones and AI glasses that decompose complex instructions into executable steps, and follow-up coverage on July 19 referred to a "MiniMax M3.1 series" with improved multimodal understanding and reasoning. The cited WAIC coverage provided no parameter count, benchmark score, context-window API term, or pricing figure.
Is MiniMax M3.1 Out Yet? The August 18 Status Check
MiniMax M3.1 was not listed in any of the four linked official and distribution catalogs below, as of August 18, 2026:
| Channel | M3.1 status | What the page shows |
|---|---|---|
| MiniMax official blog | No M3.1 post | Latest entries: Music 3.0 (Aug 13), H3 (Jul 31), M3 (Jun 1) |
| MiniMax API pricing docs | No M3.1 model ID | Text lineup tops out at MiniMax-M3, plus M2.7 and legacy models |
| OpenRouter MiniMax catalog | Not listed | 13 MiniMax models; M3 shows 1.05M context at $0.23/M input |
| Hugging Face (MiniMaxAI) | No M3.1 weights | M3 weights are live: 428B total / 23B active parameters |
This is a catalog check, not a claim about every possible reseller. The self-label problem explains most "it's already out" reports anyway. On July 27, an r/MiniMax_AI user asked whether M3.1 had shipped after an AnythingLLM session on a MiniMax token-plan key returned:
"It replied Iam minimiax 3.1" — u/ahmedranaa, r/MiniMax_AI
No commenter could reproduce the label. A model's self-reported version is generated text, not release evidence, so treat "the model said 3.1" reports as noise until a model ID appears in an official catalog.
M3.1 vs M3: What Changes and What Nobody Has Measured
MiniMax M3.1 is framed as an incremental upgrade to MiniMax M3, the model released June 1, 2026, rather than a new architecture generation. Nothing published so far contradicts that reading.
| Dimension | MiniMax M3 (verified) | MiniMax M3.1 (announced) |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | 428B total / 23B active MoE, MiniMax Sparse Attention (MSA) | Undisclosed |
| Context window | 1M tokens max, 512K guaranteed via API | "Million-level" claim, no API terms |
| Multimodality | Native image + video input, desktop computer use | "Markedly improved" multimodality, zero benchmarks |
| Positioning | Coding and agentic workflows | Enterprise: manufacturing, supply chain |
| Access | API, OpenRouter, token plans, open weights | None yet |
M3's base is documented in the MSA design paper: at 1M-token context, M3 uses roughly 1/20th the per-token compute of MiniMax's previous generation, with over 9x faster prefill and 15x faster decoding. Whether M3.1 extends that architecture is exactly what a model card would confirm, and none exists yet.
M3.1, M3 Pro, and the 2.7T Rumor Trail
"MiniMax M3.1" and "MiniMax M3 Pro" are two names circulating for adjacent roadmap items, and pre-announcement reporting is why the naming is muddy. Before WAIC, Sohu reported that MiniMax's next release could carry either the M3.1 or the M3 Pro name, alongside claims of a separate 3T-scale model and a first domestic training cluster. Second-hand reporting — The Information's scoop, relayed through our M3 Pro release-date preview — points to a 2.7-trillion-parameter model with possible open weights as early as Q3 2026.
Commenters in that same r/MiniMax_AI thread use "Pro," "2.7T," and "M3.1" interchangeably. The most economical reading: M3.1 is the near-term refresh actually shown at WAIC, while M3 Pro remains an unconfirmed larger successor. That split is editorial interpretation, not a MiniMax statement.
What MiniMax M3 Costs While You Wait
The model to budget against today is MiniMax M3, and MiniMax's pricing docs (checked August 18) now display its halved rates as permanent rather than promotional.
| Channel | Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Cache read / 1M | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax API, ≤512K input | $0.30 | $1.20 | $0.06 | Permanent 50% off the June list of $0.60/$2.40 |
| MiniMax API, >512K input | $0.60 | $2.40 | $0.12 | Long-context tier |
| MiniMax API, priority tier | $0.45 | $1.80 | $0.09 | 1.5× standard, service_tier=priority |
| OpenRouter (M3) | $0.23 | $0.96 | — | 1.05M context listed |
| OpenRouter (M3 batch) | $0.15 | $0.60 | — | 524K context |
| Token plans | — | — | — | $20/mo ≈ 1.7B, $50 ≈ 5.1B, $120 ≈ 9.8B tokens (launch post) |
A worked example: dumping a 400K-token repository into a request with 50K tokens of output costs about $0.12 + $0.06 = $0.18 at the standard tier. Crossing the 512K input boundary doubles all listed M3 rates, so long-context jobs are the ones to batch carefully.
Per MiniMax's own launch benchmarks, that money buys a model within a few points of Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5 on SWE-Bench Pro (59.0 vs 64.3 and 58.6) and MCP Atlas (74.2). M3 posts 83.5 on BrowseComp, ahead of Opus 4.7's 79.3. The clear gaps sit on Terminal-Bench 2.1 (66.0 vs GPT-5.5's 78.2) and OSWorld-Verified (70.2 vs Opus 4.7's 82.8). All of these are vendor-reported, with scaffolding and sandbox details disclosed in the launch post's methodology section.
Wait or Build: Choosing Between M3.1 and M3
Most teams should build on M3 now, because nothing about M3.1 is measurable yet: no benchmark, no price, no API. M3.1's eventual pricing, licensing, and migration terms are unknown, so it belongs on a watch list, not in a budget.
If you need image/video understanding inside a very large context this quarter, M3 already ships it — native image and video input with a guaranteed 512K window (1M max) — and you can try MiniMax M3 directly before writing integration code. If you are waiting on M3.1 benchmark numbers, hold; do not budget until an official model ID, pricing, and access terms appear. Self-hosters can already pull M3's weights under the MiniMax Community License; no M3.1 weights exist.
Community experience with M3 is split in a way that frames what M3.1 needs to fix:
"M3 isn't huge either at 430B, but it's an absolute beast; in the right harness, the model performs shockingly well." — u/ExcitementSubject361, r/MiniMax_AI
"Anyway it's my orchestrator architect/planner workhorse for just $20/m." — u/respectful_stimulus, same thread
The same thread's author argues M3's coding output "performs far worse than its hardware and parameter specifications would suggest." Strong orchestration, contested coding — a split any real M3.1 release will be judged against.
| Your situation | Do this now |
|---|---|
| Multimodal long-context work, live this quarter | M3 standard tier; keep inputs ≤512K where possible |
| Need top-tier agentic coding scores today | M3 is close (SWE-Bench Pro 59.0) but not leading; benchmark before committing |
| Self-hosting or data-residency requirements | M3 open weights under the Community License; no M3.1 weights exist |
| Only want "the newest MiniMax" | Wait for an official M3.1 model ID; verify against the status table |
MiniMax M3.1 FAQ
Is MiniMax M3.1 released?
Announced at WAIC on July 17, 2026, but not released in any purchasable form. As of August 18 there is nothing to buy, call, or download.
Is MiniMax M3.1 open source?
Not announced either way, and no public M3.1 weights exist. MiniMax M3's weights (428B total / 23B active) are downloadable on Hugging Face under the MiniMax Community License.
What is the MiniMax M3.1 API price?
None published. The reference point is M3 at $0.30/M input and $1.20/M output for requests up to 512K tokens, after MiniMax made its 50% discount permanent.
Is MiniMax M3.1 the same as M3 Pro?
Not confirmed either way. Pre-WAIC reporting listed both names as candidates for MiniMax's next release; only M3.1 has been publicly shown, while the 2.7T-parameter M3 Pro remains unconfirmed.
What context window does MiniMax M3.1 have?
"Million-level" per the WAIC claims, the same class as M3's 1M-token maximum. No API-verified figure exists yet.
Related reading: MiniMax M3 Pro: Release Date, Specs & What to Expect · MiniMax M3 vs DeepSeek V4 Pro