Glimpse vs MiniMax API

Glimpse

Glimpse reads images and video at $0.60 input and $3.00 output per million tokens, and OpenRouter serves it with tools, structured output and a 262,144-token context. It is a research preview with no public Elorian docs, model card or status page, and Elorian's terms allow training on submitted content unless a paid user opts out.

MiniMax API

M3.1 Flash costs $0.15 in and $0.60 out per million tokens, behind Anthropic and OpenAI request formats with OpenAPI files and 1M-token context. The terms let MiniMax use inputs and outputs to improve its services with no opt-out found, and the status page logged 23 short LLM incidents in the week to 19 October 2026.

Glimpse

1. Call it through OpenRouter as elorian/glimpse at https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions. Elorian's own API docs sit behind a console sign-in
2. Send video as a video_url content part, as a public URL or a base64 data URL. Batch requests are not available for this model
3. Set max_tokens yourself. The endpoint allows up to 256,000 output tokens, and visual reasoning spends many of them
4. Honour Retry-After on 429 and 503. With a single provider, a 503 means the Together deployment is unavailable, not that another host can take over
5. Treat counts and timestamps as unverified. Elorian's terms say outputs need independent human review before anyone relies on them

MiniMax API

1. Use the Anthropic-format base URL https://api.minimax.io/anthropic for tool calls. The OpenAI-format schema has no tool_choice or response_format
2. Set output_config.effort (or reasoning_effort) below max for routine calls. M3.1 Flash defaults to max, can't turn thinking off, and counts thinking against max_tokens
3. Don't rely on stop_sequences or top_k. The Anthropic-format endpoint ignores them
4. Back off on 429 and 529 yourself. No Retry-After header is documented
5. Use a pay-as-you-go key for production. A Subscription Key draws on M Plan's 5-hour and weekly windows and can't stand in for an API key