MiniMax M3.1 Flash: Specs, Price and Use in Video Work

MiniMax M3.1 Flash is a fast, low-priced language model that MiniMax released on 2026-10-19. People also search for it as MiniMax 3.1 Flash or minimax m3 1 flash, and MiniMax's own spelling is M3.1 Flash. This page gathers what MiniMax and independent trackers have published about it. It then looks at where a language model fits in AI video work, such as writing prompts, splitting an idea into shots and reading a reference clip.

We did not run the model ourselves. Every figure below comes from the sources listed at the end, checked on 2026-10-22, and numbers that differ between sources are shown side by side.

What MiniMax M3.1 Flash Is

MiniMax presents M3.1 Flash as a next-generation Flash model with gains in agentic tasks, coding, computer use and cybersecurity. The launch post also says online inference became nearly three times faster and usage cost for agentic tasks fell by 70%. Flash is the efficient tier. MiniMax says a Pro model that pushes intelligence further will arrive later, with no date.

An earlier version ran anonymously under the name Space Bunny, which MiniMax says processed more than 200 trillion tokens. OpenRouter, one of the platforms where it appeared, says Space Bunny was its top model for 10 straight days at 56.7 trillion tokens (OpenRouter on X).

A preview named M3.1-Flash-Preview debuted in MiniMax Code on 2026-09-28 (changelog), so creator videos from late September and early October cover the preview build and not the final model. The released model is available through the MiniMax API, the M Plan subscription and the MiniMax Code desktop app.

MiniMax makes several kinds of model, and two of them get mixed up. M3.1 Flash writes text. MiniMax H3 makes video, and it is the one you can use on Effect Video. The table sets them side by side.

Specs and Price From MiniMax

The table lists what MiniMax's own pages say, each with its source. Prices are list prices on the MiniMax API.

On weights, the launch post is short.

"Model weights will be released later."

MiniMax, launch post, 2026-10-19

The API docs and release notes call the model open-weight, and a MiniMax post on X gives 2026-10-23 for the release. A screenshot of that post on r/LocalLLaMA reads "Model weights will arrive on Oct 23", and VentureBeat and The Decoder report the same date. When we checked on 2026-10-22, the MiniMaxAI organization on Hugging Face listed no M3.1 repository, no license was named and MiniMax had published no parameter count. Open weights are planned, not delivered.

How It Compares With Other Fast Models

Two models come up most often next to it: Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash and DeepSeek's V4.1 Flash. The table uses only the numbers each vendor prints on its own price and model pages.

At those list prices, M3.1 Flash costs the same as DeepSeek's off-peak rate and half its peak rate. Gemini 3.8 Flash costs five times as much for input and 6.25 times as much for output until 2026-12-31, then ten times and 12.5 times as much once Google's price rises on 2027-01-01. DeepSeek's V4.1 Flash weights are already on Hugging Face with an MIT license listed, which MiniMax cannot yet match.

A low price per token does not decide the bill, because a model that thinks at length writes more tokens. VentureBeat lists about 189M output tokens for M3.1 Flash on the Artificial Analysis index run, against 324M for GLM-5.3 Flash and 334M for Gemini 3.8 Flash. The Artificial Analysis page, read on 2026-10-22, puts M3.1 Flash at 180M and calls it very verbose against a median of 99M across the models it tracks. The next table shows what Artificial Analysis reported in launch week, as relayed by VentureBeat and The Decoder.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash leads on the index and on CritPt. M3.1 Flash is ahead on Humanity's Last Exam and on the share of factual questions answered correctly, and it costs far less per task than Gemini 3.8 Flash. VentureBeat adds MiniMax's own figures, which it labels as vendor numbers: 62.2 on Automation-Bench against 60.5 for DeepSeek, and 73.7% on DeepSWE against 77% for DeepSeek.

The weak point in the data is hallucination. Artificial Analysis gave M3.1 Flash a 93% hallucination rate on AA-Omniscience, which VentureBeat explains as the share of non-correct answers that were wrong, with no refusal and no partial answer. Its summary of the result:

"it demonstrated an exceptionally high tendency to generate incorrect answers rather than acknowledge uncertainty."

Carl Franzen, VentureBeat, 2026-10-19

On the same test the model answered 56% of questions correctly, against 43% for DeepSeek V4.1 Flash.

Where the Sources Disagree

Launch coverage repeats MiniMax's numbers, and trackers keep updating theirs. The table lists the differences we found.

Using It in an AI Video Workflow

A language model sits before the video model in the workflow and does not replace it. Everything in this section is how we would use it. We have not tested M3.1 Flash on any of these jobs, and we found no creator test that did.

The input list is the useful part. MiniMax says M3.1 Flash takes images and video as input and answers in text. In MiniMax Code, together with code and image-processing tools, MiniMax says it can handle tasks such as finding image differences, structuring charts and analyzing video shots. MiniMax describes that as

"tool-assisted image and video processing, which is different from native image or video generation."

MiniMax, M3.1 Flash page on MiniMax Agent

Five steps follow from that.

1. Turn one line of idea into a shot list. Ask for each shot's framing, what the subject does, the camera move, the light and how the shot ends, and keep each shot to a sentence or two.
2. Match the format to the video model. MiniMax's own H3 prompt guide asks for shots in playback order, a cut time on every shot after the first, such as [Shot 2] At 00:03.500, the camera cuts to, and camera moves written as a move, an amplitude and a speed. The guide is written for H3 on the MiniMax API. We have not tested whether the H3 route on Effect Video follows it, so treat it as a starting point.
3. Split a long idea into clip-sized pieces. Each model on Effect Video has its own clip lengths, and MiniMax H3 offers 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 or 15 seconds. One shot or one beat per generation keeps each revision small, and the generator shows the credits before you start.
4. Read a reference clip before you write. MiniMax's docs say the model accepts video, so you can ask for a shot-by-shot breakdown of a clip you made or have permission to use. Artificial Analysis lists image input only, so run a short clip of your own first and check the breakdown against what you see.
5. Revise from the result. Generate one short, low-cost clip, then give the model the prompt and a note on what went wrong, and ask for a tighter rewrite.

Effect pages work differently. A template such as AI Dance or AI Hug takes photos and fixes the prompt itself, so there is no prompt for a language model to write. Where M3.1 Flash can still help is planning: picking the template that suits a photo and checking the photo requirements on the page. AI Lip Sync takes a portrait and your own audio. A language model can draft the lines you then record, and it does not make the audio.

For the generator, the examples below show the shape of a request and of the result you would paste into the generator. We wrote both by hand. They are not output from M3.1 Flash.

• Ask the model: "Turn this idea into three shots for a 10-second clip: a street musician plays under a stone bridge at dusk. For each shot give the framing, what the subject does, the camera move, the light and how the shot ends. Keep each shot under 40 words."
• Paste into the generator: "Shot 1: Wide shot of a street musician under a stone bridge at dusk, lamps warming up, camera pushes in slowly. Shot 2: Cut to a close-up of hands on guitar strings, shallow depth of field, steady camera. Shot 3: Cut to the musician looking up and smiling as passers-by slow down, camera pulls back to a wide frame."

Make Video With What Effect Video Offers

MiniMax H3 is the MiniMax model you can use here. MiniMax H3 takes a text prompt and shows the credits before you generate. The generator lets you pick a model, and the prompt library has prompts to adapt. For a result without writing a prompt, effect pages take a photo.

Limits and Open Questions

• Our own testing: none. We did not call the API, so this page has no output samples and no check of how well the model writes video prompts.
• Creator tests: the four YouTube videos below test coding, benchmarks and general performance. Two were made on the preview build before the 2026-10-19 release, and we found no video that tests prompt writing for AI video.
• Video input: MiniMax lists it, and three independent sources list text and image only. No benchmark for video understanding turned up.
• Accuracy: Artificial Analysis reports a 93% hallucination rate on AA-Omniscience. Check any fact the model writes, such as product details or dates in a script, before you use it.
• Weights, license and size: the announced 2026-10-23 weights were not out when we checked on 2026-10-22, and no license or parameter count is public. Some search summaries attach 428B total and about 23B active parameters to M3.1 Flash. Those are MiniMax-M3's figures, and no MiniMax page we read gives a count for M3.1 Flash, so we do not use them.
• Availability: OpenRouter's page says its free launch period ended on 2026-10-22, and two Reddit threads from the same day ask about an unavailable free endpoint and about overload. We did not test capacity.
• Names: posts from the preview period call the model M3.1 Flash or M3.1-Flash-Preview. The released model is MiniMax-M3.1-Flash.
• Pricing: list prices on MiniMax's API. Third-party hosts, plan quotas and free periods can differ.

This page is assembled from the public sources listed under References. They start with MiniMax's own pages and the Gemini and DeepSeek price pages, then add independent coverage, trackers such as Artificial Analysis and OpenRouter, creator videos, posts on X and Reddit threads. Coverage and trackers are secondary sources, so their numbers are credited to them by name. We summarize, quote briefly and link to the original. All sources were read on 2026-10-22. If MiniMax publishes weights, a license or a parameter count, the page needs an update.