Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Apodex-1.1-mini vs MiniMax-M2.5

Apodex-1.1-mini scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against MiniMax-M2.5's 57.5 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Apodex-1.1-mini C

Best for Long-running agent tasks with tools on a 32 GB GPU or Mac, or through Apodex's API, under a plain licence

Ahead on

  • Reach, 85 against 65
  • Risk, 65 against 30
  • Agent interface, 85 against 75
  • Documentation and upkeep, 38 against 22

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 1.8 out of 5

Watch for

No safety results, and agent guidance only from the harness

MiniMax-M2.5 C

Best for Teams with a 4 to 8 GPU server who want an open agent and coding model with parallel tool calls and can live with its use policy

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

230 GB in FP8, and about 155 GB for the smallest 4-bit library build, more than a 128 GB machine

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runApodex-1.1-miniMiniMax-M2.5Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%258565Apodex-1.1-mini +20
Risk20%206530Apodex-1.1-mini +35
Agent interface10%108575Apodex-1.1-mini +10
Documentation and upkeep10%103822Apodex-1.1-mini +16
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 57.5/100

Facts side by side

FactApodex-1.1-miniMiniMax-M2.5
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorApodex AIMiniMax
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MiniMax Model License (model) and modified MIT (code)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-08-252026-02-12
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews3.3/5 (4)1.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

Apodex-1.1-mini

An agent cousin fine-tuned from Qwen3.5-35B-A3B for long tasks with files, code and tools, with parallel tool calling and about 3B active parameters. It needs 32 GB for Apodex's GGUF, NVFP4 or GPTQ-Int4 builds or about 86 GB in BF16, and Apodex's API serves it too. The main risks are no safety results and no replies from the publisher.

MiniMax-M2.5

MiniMax-M2.5 is a 230B mixture-of-experts model for coding and agent work, with parallel tool calls, a 196K context and parsers in vLLM and SGLang. It needs a 4-GPU server for FP8 or about 155 GB for a 4-bit build. The main risk is a licence replaced after release with a Prohibited Uses Policy while the card still says modified MIT.

Before you call either

Apodex-1.1-mini

  1. Serve it with vllm serve apodex/Apodex-1.1-mini --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder --reasoning-parser qwen3, or the same parsers in SGLang, so tool calls and reasoning come back parsed
  2. For llama.cpp, llama-server -hf apodex/Apodex-1.1-mini-GGUF:Q4_K_M --jinja --reasoning-format deepseek, and the card passes the repository's chat_template.jinja with --chat-template-file
  3. Pass tools through the API's tools parameter rather than in the system prompt, as the card asks
  4. The card recommends temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95, repetition_penalty 1.05 and max_tokens up to 32,768
  5. Send your own system prompt, or set identity_mode, since the template otherwise adds an Apodex identity block
  6. The template keeps all earlier reasoning in the context unless preserve_thinking is false, which grows long agent sessions
  7. Thinking is on by default, send chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking false for short tasks, a switch the card doesn't mention
  8. The card's Python example has a broken line where it runs the tool (available_toolsname), so fix it to available_tools[name](**args) before running
  9. Validate JSON output yourself, since structured output isn't documented

MiniMax-M2.5

  1. Start it with vLLM on 4 GPUs of 96 GB, SAFETENSORS_FAST_GPU=1 vllm serve MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.5 --trust-remote-code --tensor-parallel-size 4 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser minimax_m2 --reasoning-parser minimax_m2_append_think
  2. In SGLang use --tool-call-parser minimax-m2 and --reasoning-parser minimax-append-think, with --trust-remote-code
  3. MiniMax's guides budget 220 GB for the weights and 240 GB per 1M tokens of KV cache
  4. On a single large-memory machine, LM Studio's catalogue entry minimax/minimax-m2.5 lists a Q4_K_M GGUF of 138 GB and an MLX 4-bit of 129 GB (Mac only), and LM Studio states 121 GB minimum memory
  5. Sample with temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 40, as the card recommends
  6. Budget output tokens for thinking on every turn, since the template always opens a think block
  7. Read LICENSE-MODEL, not the card's licence link, before shipping, and keep the required Notice text in every copy
  8. Without the hardware, call it through Novita or Featherless AI; MiniMax's own API retires M2.5 on 18 November 2026

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Apodex-1.1-mini or MiniMax-M2.5?

Apodex-1.1-mini scores 61 (C) on agent readiness against MiniMax-M2.5's 57.5 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Other comparisons with Apodex-1.1-mini or MiniMax-M2.5

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