$ diff astra minimax-m3
Astra vs MiniMax M3
Values come from Astra and MiniMax M3, where each is cited to its source. This page states no benchmark result and ranks neither model — it puts two published specifications next to each other. Where a lab has not published a figure, the row says so rather than guessing.
OpenAIAstra
- context
- 1.1M
- weights
- closed
- $/M in
- $10
- $/M out
- $50
- context
- 1M
- weights
- open
- $/M in
- $0.3
- $/M out
- $1.2
What actually differs
- Context window
- Astra takes 1.1M against 1M — modestly more room in a single request.
- Input price
- MiniMax M3 at $0.3/M against $10/M — 33.3× cheaper to feed. Standard rates: one of these labs also quotes a lower cached-input tier, which applies only when a prefix is reused — see the full spec below.
- Output price
- MiniMax M3 at $1.2/M against $50/M — 41.7× cheaper to generate. Output dominates the bill on most agentic workloads, where the model writes far more than it reads.
- Weights
- MiniMax M3 publishes weights (Open-weight (HuggingFace)); Astra is API-only. That decides self-hosting, air-gapped deployment and fine-tuning before any capability question does.
- Recency
- Astra shipped 94 days after MiniMax M3 (2026-09-03 vs 2026-06-01).
Full spec
| Attribute | Astra | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | OpenAI | MiniMax |
| Released | 2026-09-03 | 2026-06-01 |
| Context window | 1,050,000 tokens (128,000 max output) | 1,000,000 tokens (1M); min. 512K guaranteed |
| Pricing | $10/M input · $50/M output | $0.30/M input · $1.20/M output ($0.06/M cached input) — OpenRouter catalogue, read 2026-07-28 |
| License | proprietary | Open-weight (HuggingFace) |
| Availability | ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise · OpenAI API · AWS — staged, see below | API (global, including English) + open-weight on HuggingFace |