Real head-to-head · same prompt, one shot
Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax M3
The reasoning king — deepest thinking, premium price. vs 1M-context frontier model at $0.30/M tokens — cheapest big-context model on the bench.
Head-to-head verdict: Opus 4.8 wins 11–1 with 1 tie.
What I tested — same prompt, two models
I run the same fixed prompt set through every new model the day it drops — same string, one shot, single HTML file out — and I score the result 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. Below is what came out when I gave the exact same prompts to Opus 4.8 and MiniMax M3, side by side, on 17 shared tasks inside the Agent Operating System.
Both models were given identical prompts inside the Agent Operating System — no help, no iteration, no "best of N" tricks. I run each prompt once, save the HTML file the model produces, and score it 0–10 on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The scoring is mine. The verdicts below are pulled from my source comparison guides at agentos.guide where I publish every score and the reasoning behind it.
Opus 4.8 · The default when the build has to ship on the first prompt — Opus is the safety net inside Agent OS for hard one-shots.
MiniMax M3 · Bench prompts dispatched via OpenRouter. Scored by Claude judge against the same 42 prompts every other model ran.
Side-by-side on 42 shared tasks
Click any cell to play that model's actual one-shot attempt. Medals are derived from my 0–10 scores per task (highest = 🥇, second = 🥈, third = 🥉).
Task ↓
Opus 4.8
MiniMax M3
Game
Game
Game
Game
Game
Page
Sim
Sim
Sim
Sim
Sim
Sim
Sim
Sim
Sim
Visual
Visual
Game
— not attempted —
Game
— not attempted —
Game
— not attempted —
Game
— not attempted —
Game
— not attempted —
Game
— not attempted —
Game
— not attempted —
Where Opus 4.8 beat MiniMax M3
The tasks where I gave Opus 4.8 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.
Blackhole
Sim
Opus 4.8 9.0
·
MiniMax M3 7.0
(+2.0)
· winner · hit the brief
What I saw: Opus nailed it — a pure-black event horizon, a bright photon ring, and the disk bent up and over the top exactly like the film's lensing. GLM came in strong with a clean ring and a starfield warping past the hole. Kimi's disk is fine, but the background is a soft grey blur instea…
Galaxy
Sim
Opus 4.8 8.5
·
MiniMax M3 7.5
(+1.0)
· winner · interactive 3D
What I saw: Opus built a proper interactive 3D galaxy — drag to orbit a 7,000-star cloud around a glowing core. Kimi's is the prettiest single frame: a clean tilted spiral disk with rainbow arms. GLM's runs on a canvas with a slick NGC-style HUD and zoom, just less dramatic at a glance. Thre…
Solar
Sim
Opus 4.8 8.5
·
MiniMax M3 7.5
(+1.0)
· winner · 3D depth
What I saw: Three genuinely good space sims. Opus tilts the orbits into real 3D with a bloom-heavy sun and Saturn's rings. GLM's is the most product-like — labelled planets, orbit and label toggles, a clean HUD. Kimi's is a tidy tilted-orbit system with rings and a deep starfield. Opus and G…
Landing
Page
Opus 4.8 9.0
·
MiniMax M3 8.0
(+1.0)
· tie · top
What I saw: Funniest result of the lot: GLM and Opus independently produced near-identical premium 'Introducing Nova 1 — Intelligence, reimagined / distilled' keynote pages — gradient hero, full nav, pricing tiers. A dead heat. Kimi's was a plainer set of feature cards.
Neoncity
Game
Opus 4.8 8.5
·
MiniMax M3 7.5
(+1.0)
What I saw: GLM's is the most cinematic — neon towers, a setting sun, Japanese signage and a flight HUD, like a frame from a film. Opus's is a clean canyon of lit skyscrapers racing to a vanishing point. Kimi leaned into the synthwave sun and grid more than the city itself. GLM wins the skyline.
Where MiniMax M3 beat Opus 4.8
The tasks where I gave MiniMax M3 a higher 0–10 score on the same prompt — with the actual commentary from my source guides.
Fluid
Sim
MiniMax M3 7.5
·
Opus 4.8 7.0
(+0.5)
What I saw: 2D fluid sim with click-drag injection.
Strengths & weaknesses I logged
Opus 4.8
Strengths
- Most consistent across the Goldie Bench bench — no weak build, 8.46/10 average
- Deepest one-shot reasoning, especially on game-feel and physics
- Extended thinking mode handles up to 1M tokens of context
Trade-offs
- 5–10× the per-token cost of every other model on the bench
- Less flair on cinematic visuals than GLM-5.2 — playing it safer wins on accuracy, costs you on showpiece moments
MiniMax M3
Strengths
- 1M token context — full repo / full deep-research corpus fits in one call
- $0.30/M input is roughly 1/30th of Opus 4.8 — built for high-volume agent loops
- Solid one-shot HTML output — clean structure on game and visual prompts
Trade-offs
- Less polished than Fusion's panel-ensembled output on the toughest deep builds
- Newer model — less community calibration vs Fable 5 / Opus 4.8
Pricing & context — the spec sheet
| Spec | Opus 4.8 | MiniMax M3 |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Anthropic | MiniMax |
| Context window | 200,000 tokens (1M with extended thinking) | 1,048,576-token context — matches GLM-5.2 and Fable 5 |
| Price | $15 / $75 per M tokens | $0.30 / 1M input tokens, $1.50 / 1M output |
| Pricing detail | Premium pricing via the Anthropic API: $15 per million input tokens, $75 per million output tokens. Extended thinking is included but adds latency. | MiniMax M3 is the cheapest 1M-context frontier model on the bench — roughly 1/200th the per-call cost of OpenRouter Fusion and 1/30th of Claude Opus 4.8. Designed for high-volume agent workloads where context length matters but per-call budget is tight. |
| Release | 2026-05 | 2026-06-18 |
| Bench coverage | 13/17 scored · avg 8.46/10 | 42/42 scored · avg 7.96/10 |
The verdict — which should you pick?
Across 13 scored shared tasks, Opus 4.8 averaged 8.46/10, beating MiniMax M3's 7.73/10 by 0.73 points. Pick Opus 4.8 when the build has to ship on the first prompt and you can afford the trade-offs in the comparison below.
If you only run one of these inside your stack, the head-to-head average above is the call. If you can run both, my honest play is to wire Opus 4.8 and MiniMax M3 both into the Agent Operating System and dispatch each from the kanban by task type — mission-critical one-shot builds where 'has to work the first time' matters → Opus 4.8, high-volume agent workflows where per-call cost dominates → MiniMax M3. That's the same setup I run for the 3,600+ founders inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
FAQ — Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax M3
Which is better, Opus 4.8 or MiniMax M3?
On Goldie Bench, Opus 4.8 averages 8.46/10 across the shared tasks, with 7 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze overall. MiniMax M3 averages 7.73/10, with 12 gold, 11 silver, 8 bronze. Opus 4.8 wins the head-to-head 11–1.
How much does Opus 4.8 cost vs MiniMax M3?
Opus 4.8: Premium pricing via the Anthropic API: $15 per million input tokens, $75 per million output tokens. Extended thinking is included but adds latency. MiniMax M3: MiniMax M3 is the cheapest 1M-context frontier model on the bench — roughly 1/200th the per-call cost of OpenRouter Fusion and 1/30th of Claude Opus 4.8. Designed for high-volume agent workloads where context length matters but per-call budget is tight.
What's the context window for Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax M3?
Opus 4.8 has a 200,000 tokens (1M with extended thinking) context window. MiniMax M3 has a 1,048,576-token context — matches GLM-5.2 and Fable 5 context window.
When should I pick Opus 4.8 over MiniMax M3?
Pick Opus 4.8 for: Mission-critical one-shot builds where 'has to work the first time' matters; Hard reasoning tasks (planning, multi-step) where you'll pay for the depth; Anything where vendor reliability beats the per-token bill. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: 5–10× the per-token cost of every other model on the bench; Less flair on cinematic visuals than GLM-5.2 — playing it safer wins on accuracy, costs you on showpiece moments.
When should I pick MiniMax M3 over Opus 4.8?
Pick MiniMax M3 for: High-volume agent workflows where per-call cost dominates; 1M-context tasks (whole-repo refactors, deep-research synthesis); Drop-in cheaper alternative to GLM-5.2 with comparable 1M context. The trade-off is the weaknesses we logged on the bench: Less polished than Fusion's panel-ensembled output on the toughest deep builds; Newer model — less community calibration vs Fable 5 / Opus 4.8.
How does Goldie Bench score Opus 4.8 vs MiniMax M3?
Every demo on this page was built by Julian Goldie inside the Agent Operating System — same fixed prompt for both models, one shot, single HTML file out. Each result gets a 0–10 score on whether it ran, how close it hit the brief, and how good it looked. The highest score on each task gets gold; second gets silver; third gets bronze. See methodology for full provenance.
Related comparisons
Other head-to-heads using the same scoring system:
Opus 4.8 vs GLM-5.2 MiniMax M3 vs GLM-5.2 Opus 4.8 vs Grok MiniMax M3 vs Grok Opus 4.8 vs Fusion MiniMax M3 vs Fusion Opus 4.8 vs Fugu Ultra MiniMax M3 vs Fugu UltraFull model pages: Opus 4.8 · MiniMax M3 · back to the leaderboard
The same stack Julian uses
Run this stack yourself.
Every demo on this bench was built inside the Agent Operating System — one prompt, one shot, single HTML file out. The Agent OS, the prompts, the templates, the weekly walkthroughs and 3,600+ founders shipping with it every day all live inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
3,600+founders
258documented wins
38countries
$100k+/mocommunity MRR