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How much energy does MiniMax-M2.5 use?

MiniMax · released 2026-02-12

MiniMax-M2.5 uses about 0.027 Wh – 0.908 Wh of electricity to answer a typical question. That places it 173 of 266 among the models we can measure, and every figure here is calculated the same way as every other model.

A typical question
0.027 Wh – 0.908 Wh
A long, complex answer
0.640 Wh – 21.2 Wh
Capability
146.5
Energy rank
173 of 266
Human votes
1359

How capable is it, really?

The capability figure of 146.51 is a composite over 58 benchmarks — Epoch AI's Capabilities Index, which folds in software engineering, agentic tool use, long-context comprehension and creative writing as well as science reasoning. It is one number standing for a lot of separate tests, so treat a small gap between two models as noise rather than a ranking.

40,843 people have voted on it in blind head-to-head comparisons on LMArena, giving it a rating of 1359. This is the only figure here that measures whether anyone actually prefers the answers, rather than how the model scores on a test. Broken down, people rate it 1378 on coding, 1332 on creative writing, 1352 on following instructions.

What this figure is

Inferred  The maker publishes no size at all, so it is inferred from how capable the model is and when it was released. A wide bracket, not a figure. Every model on this site is calculated the same way, so the comparison holds even where the absolute value carries uncertainty. Our figures are good to roughly a factor of two to three, which is why we only ever state a difference of 5× or more.

We cannot pin this one down. MiniMax has never published how MiniMax-M2.5 is built, and the two plausible answers are far apart — which is why a range is shown rather than a figure. It is listed because leaving it out would reward the silence, and it is barred from every headline claim on this site.

Is there a better choice?

A lighter model that does the job
OpenAI · capability 145.8. It scores within 0.7 points of MiniMax-M2.5 on Epoch's Capabilities Index (145.85 against 146.51), close enough to call the same cluster, and uses about 5.9× less energy per answer: 0.624 Wh against 3.68 Wh. In blind human voting people rate it 1373 against 1359.

What MiniMax publishes

Energy cannot be worked out without knowing how big a model is. Of the 3 models from MiniMax that we track, 1 can be assessed at all — the rest publish too little for anyone outside the company to calculate anything.

Where these figures come from

Capability and the roster come from Epoch AI, whose Capabilities Index is the 58-benchmark composite quoted above. Energy is calculated with EcoLogits and calibrated against laboratory measurements from ML.ENERGY. Human preference comes from LMArena. All four are public and free; the full method is here.

These figures are published under CC BY 4.0 — use them anywhere, including commercially, with credit to The AI Footprint.

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Figure calculated 2026-09-20 · how these numbers are made · the full comparison of 266 models