Llama 4 (Meta) vs MiniMax M2 / M2.5
Which one should you pick? Here's the full breakdown.
Llama 4 (Meta)
Meta's open-weights flagship family -- Scout (10M context), Maverick (multimodal 400B MoE), Behemoth in preview
MiniMax M2 / M2.5
MiniMax's open-weights frontier -- first open model to match Claude Opus 4.6 on SWE-Bench at 10-20× lower cost
| Category | Llama 4 (Meta) | MiniMax M2 / M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 5.0 | 6.5 |
| Output Quality | 8.5 | 9.0 |
| Value | 9.0 | 9.5 |
| Features | 9.0 | 8.5 |
| Overall | 7.9 | 8.4 |
Pricing Comparison
| Feature | Llama 4 (Meta) | MiniMax M2 / M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Price | $0 | $0 |
Benchmark Head-to-Head
Llama 4 Maverick (17B/400B MoE) vs MiniMax M2.5 (230B/10B active MoE)
| Benchmark | Llama 4 (Meta) | MiniMax M2 / M2.5 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.5% | 82.1% |
| GPQA Diamond | 69.8% | 76.8% |
| HumanEval | 88% | 91% |
Which Should You Pick?
Pick Llama 4 (Meta) if...
Developers and teams who need a permissively-licensed open-weights model with strong tooling, long context (Scout), or multimodal (Maverick). Safe default choice given the ecosystem.
Visit Llama 4 (Meta)Pick MiniMax M2 / M2.5 if...
- ✓Easier to use (6.5 vs 5)
- ✓Stronger on graduate-level science questions (+7.0% on GPQA Diamond)
Agentic coding and tool-use workflows on a budget. Best price-to-SWE-Bench ratio of any open-weights model in 2026.
Visit MiniMax M2 / M2.5Our Verdict
MiniMax M2 / M2.5 edges out Llama 4 (Meta) with a 8.4 vs 7.9 overall score. Both are solid picks, but MiniMax M2 / M2.5 has the advantage in output quality.