Qwen3.5-397B-A17B vs MiniMax M2.1 Comparison
Comparing Qwen3.5-397B-A17B and MiniMax M2.1 across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B outperforms in 6 benchmarks (AA-LCR, BrowseComp, GPQA, Humanity's Last Exam, IFBench, SWE-Bench Verified), while MiniMax M2.1 is better at 3 benchmarks (MMLU-Pro, SWE-bench Multilingual, Toolathlon).
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B shows notably better performance in the majority of benchmarks.
Arena Performance
Human preference votes
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B ($0.60/1M tokens) is 2.0x more expensive than MiniMax M2.1 ($0.30/1M tokens).
For output processing, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B ($3.60/1M tokens) is 3.0x more expensive than MiniMax M2.1 ($1.20/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is more expensive than MiniMax M2.1.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B has 167.0B more parameters than MiniMax M2.1, making it 72.6% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
MiniMax M2.1 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Qwen3.5-397B-A17B's 262,144 tokens. MiniMax M2.1 can generate longer responses up to 1,000,000 tokens, while Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is limited to 64,000 tokens.
Input Capabilities
Supported data types and modalities
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B supports multimodal inputs, whereas MiniMax M2.1 does not.
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
MiniMax M2.1
License
Usage and distribution terms
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is licensed under Apache 2.0, while MiniMax M2.1 uses MIT.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Apache 2.0
Open weights
MIT
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B was released on 2026-02-16, while MiniMax M2.1 was released on 2025-12-23.
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is 2 months newer than MiniMax M2.1.
Feb 16, 2026
4 weeks ago
1mo newerDec 23, 2025
2 months ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Provider Availability
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is available from Novita. MiniMax M2.1 is available from MiniMax. The availability of providers can affect quality of the model and reliability.
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
MiniMax M2.1
Outputs Comparison
Key Takeaways
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
View detailsAlibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
MiniMax M2.1
View detailsMiniMax
Detailed Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|