❯ MiniMax launches M3.1 Flash, claiming 70% lower agent costs

A faster low-cost modelMiniMax released M3.1 Flash on October 19, claiming nearly threefold faster online inference and 70% lower overall agent-task costs than its predecessor. It is available through the official API, M Plan and MiniMax Code. Space Bunny, previously offered anonymously, was an early version; the launch turns that experiment into a named service developers can integrate and pay for.

Prices versus task billsPrices are $0.15 per million input tokens, $0.60 for output and $0.015 for cached input. Tokens measure the text a model processes; caching discounts content reused across requests. A complete task also incurs reasoning, tool-use and retry costs. The claimed 70% reduction is therefore a vendor comparison of task costs, rather than a guaranteed saving on every customer’s bill.

Working across applicationsThe model targets coding, computer use and workflows spanning business applications. MiniMax describes sales, customer-service and finance tasks that require planning, tool calls and verification, and reports 73.7% on DeepSWE v1.1. Cheaper calls help developers only if the full workflow finishes with fewer costly retries. The official launch post schedules weights for October 23, leaving API access and self-hosting at different stages.

▮ SIGNALThe commercial test for cheaper models is the total cost and number of retries needed to finish a task.