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

Ling-3.1-flash-1019 vs MiniMax-M2.5

MiniMax-M2.5 scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.1-flash-1019's 54.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ling-3.1-flash-1019 leads on risk and documentation and upkeep. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 4969 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Ling-3.1-flash-1019 C

Best for Teams with a multi-GPU server that want an MIT-licensed flagship for long agent runs and coding

Ahead on

  • Risk, 45 against 30
  • Documentation and upkeep, 56 against 37

Watch for

574 GB in FP8 with no smaller build from inclusionAI, so no single machine under 690 GB of GPU memory runs it

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

Ahead on

  • Reach, 65 against 60
  • Agent interface, 75 against 60

Watch for

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

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Documentation and upkeep Ling-3.1-flash-1019 +19

Ling-3.1-flash-1019 56

Model card 11, Intended use (complex reasoning, multi-step tasks and agentic workflows), architecture, parameters (560B total, 25B active) and context (1M claimed) are on the card. Training data 15, the training-content summary the card links names the source categories (Common Crawl and other public datasets, commercially licensed data, the Ant Spider crawler, synthetic data), the size band (over 10 trillion text tokens), data collected up to about July 2026 and the filtering, without listing datasets with sizes. Last change 20, the newest commit, on 4 November 2026, edited the card, six days before this check, and the files went up on 27 October. Responsiveness 0, Neither of the 2 discussions that aren't pull requests (both opened on 27 October 2026) has a reply from an inclusionAI member. Version policy 5, the update went into a repository of its own and Ling-3.1-flash and Ling 3.0 stay in theirs. File health 5, the card states a 1M-token context while config.json gives 262,144 with no rope scaling, and its serve commands name the earlier repository as the model path. 11 + 15 + 20 + 0 + 5 + 5 = 56.

MiniMax-M2.5 37

The model card earns 2, stating only intended use and leaving out limitations, architecture, parameters, context, natural languages and a cut-off. Training data earns 5 for a general description with no cut-off. The last change earns 20, a card edit on 26 October 2026 (commit 2515a3ea, a link renamed from MiniMax Agent to MiniMax Code), 9 days before this check; the files, template and code are unchanged since February. Responsiveness earns 5, with a MiniMax reply in 2 of the 40 most recent discussions and none since April. Version policy earns 5, since earlier and later models sit in their own repositories without dated notes. File health earns nothing, because the card's licence metadata still contradicts the licence in the files and an FP8 output report still waits without a reply. 2+5+20+5+5+0 = 37.

Risk Ling-3.1-flash-1019 +15

Ling-3.1-flash-1019 45

File safety 15, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files (25), less 10 because the card's documented vLLM command passes --trust-remote-code, which runs the repository's configuration_bailing_moe_v3.py, since vLLM 0.33.0 registers no bailing_hybrid config of its own. Provenance 15, files in the inclusionAI organisation that inclusion-ai.org links to, per the Ling-3.0-tiny listing (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results for the model on its card or in the training-content summary. Agent guidance 0, the card has nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards, and inclusionAI publishes no guardrail probe for this model as it did for Ling 3.0. Licence risk 15, MIT with no use policy, no field-of-use limits, no threshold and no clause letting inclusionAI change or revoke it. Security programme 0, www.inclusion-ai.org answers 404 for security.txt on 10 November 2026, and the Ling-3.0-tiny listing found no SECURITY.md or disclosure policy in the inclusionAI .github repository. 15 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 45.

MiniMax-M2.5 30

File safety earns 15, safetensors only with no pickle files, less 10 because every documented loading route passes trust_remote_code for the repository's Python. Provenance earns the full 15, files in the organisation MiniMax links to with a SHA-256 for each shard. Safety evaluation and agent guidance earn nothing, as MiniMax publishes neither. Licence risk earns nothing (read 21 October 2026). The Prohibited Uses Policy goes beyond the law, MiniMax can end the licence for any breach and replaced its terms three weeks after release, and that change on 6 March 2026 came with no dated note while the card still links to a deleted file. The security programme earns nothing, with no security.txt, disclosure policy, SECURITY.md or advisories, and only a general contact address on the card.

Agent interface MiniMax-M2.5 +15

Ling-3.1-flash-1019 60

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (6,042 characters), which handles tools, the thinking switch and preserved reasoning. Tool-calling format 10, only the template says how tools are declared (JSON in <tools>) and how calls come back (<tool_call>name with <arg_key> and <arg_value> pairs). Trained tool calling 20, the template tells the model it may call one or more functions and loops over every entry in an assistant message's tool_calls, and the card reports gains on agentic benchmarks, AA-Briefcase and AutomationBench-AA among them. Structured output 0, the card doesn't document JSON or JSON Schema output. Reasoning control 0, the card documents turning thinking on or off per request with chat_template_kwargs enable_thinking, and names the ling3 reasoning parser, but doesn't say where the reasoning text comes back. Context 10, 262,144 tokens natively in config.json (max_position_embeddings 262144, rope_scaling null) and per SGLang's cookbook. 20 + 10 + 20 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 60.

MiniMax-M2.5 75

The chat template earns 20 for chat_template.jinja in the repository. The tool-calling format earns 25, as MiniMax's own guide documents how tools go in and how calls come back, gives a parsing function, and its deployment guides name the vLLM and SGLang parsers. Trained tool calling earns 20, with several invoke blocks in one call. Structured output earns nothing, since JSON output isn't documented or claimed. Reasoning control earns nothing, because thinking is always on with no documented way to turn it off or budget it. Context earns 10 for 196,608 tokens with no position scaling.

Reach MiniMax-M2.5 +5

Ling-3.1-flash-1019 60

Memory 0, inclusionAI's only build is the FP8 release at 573.78 GB, × 1.2 = 688.5 GB, above 256 GB, and no runtime's library has a build. Runtimes 25, Released model code in Transformers 5.22.2 (bailing_hybrid), vLLM 0.33.0 (BailingMoeV3ForCausalLM, with ling3 tool and reasoning parsers), SGLang 0.5.23 (bailing_moe_v3.py, its bailing_hybrid config and MTP module) and llama.cpp b12242 (bailingmoe3), and Ollama, credited through its pinned llama.cpp as on the Ling-3.0-tiny listing: v0.40.16 sets LLAMA_CPP_VERSION to b12177. Builds 10, the release is FP8, the one quantised precision inclusionAI publishes for it. Terms 15, MIT in the card's metadata, with no use policy or other terms added on the card or in the repository. Download 10, the Hub API's model info gives gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and no terms to accept. Hosted 0, the Hub API's provider mapping is empty for this repository on 10 November 2026. 0 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 0 = 60.

MiniMax-M2.5 65

Memory earns 5. MiniMax only publishes its 230 GB FP8 release, and the smallest build of 4-bit or better from a runtime's own library is LM Studio's MLX 4-bit at 128.7 GB, about 154 GB with the fifth added, so it needs more than our 107.4 GB machine and fits within 256 GB. Runtimes earn the full 25, with model code in released vLLM v0.33.0, SGLang v0.5.23, llama.cpp and Transformers, an LM Studio catalogue entry, and Ollama 0.40.14, whose pinned llama.cpp b11963 has the minimax-m2 architecture, though Ollama's library lists no build. Builds earn 10 for one publisher precision, the FP8 release. Terms earn 10 for a custom licence that allows free commercial use under a use policy. Download earns 10, with no gate or account. Hosted earns 5, since Novita and Featherless AI serve it through Hugging Face, while MiniMax's own API is closed to new users and retires it on 18 November 2026. 5+25+10+10+10+5 = 65.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLing-3.1-flash-1019MiniMax-M2.5Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%256065MiniMax-M2.5 +5
Risk20%204530Ling-3.1-flash-1019 +15
Agent interface10%106075MiniMax-M2.5 +15
Documentation and upkeep10%105637Ling-3.1-flash-1019 +19
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 54.8/100C 59/100

Facts side by side

FactLing-3.1-flash-1019MiniMax-M2.5
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorinclusionAI (Ant Group)MiniMax
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMiniMax Model License (model) and modified MIT (code)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-042026-02-12
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone1.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Ling-3.1-flash-1019

inclusionAI's newest flagship, a 560B hybrid mixture of experts under plain MIT that vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp run in released versions. It ships only as 574 GB of FP8, so it needs a multi-GPU server. The card overstates the context, documents little about tool calls, and has no safety results.

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

Ling-3.1-flash-1019

  1. Serve it with SGLang 0.5.23 or later on 8 H200 or 4 GB300 GPUs, per the card, and use this repository's name as the model path, not the earlier one the card's command shows
  2. With vLLM pass --trust-remote-code, --tool-call-parser ling3 and --reasoning-parser ling3
  3. Set chat_template_kwargs enable_thinking false for direct answers. Reasoning comes back in reasoning_content per SGLang's cookbook
  4. Plan on 262,144 tokens of context. The 1M figure needs the YaRN override in SGLang's cookbook
  5. Use temperature 1.0, top_p 0.95 and top_k 20, per the card
  6. 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, Ling-3.1-flash-1019 or MiniMax-M2.5?

MiniMax-M2.5 scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Ling-3.1-flash-1019's 54.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 4 scored categories. Ling-3.1-flash-1019 leads on risk and documentation and upkeep.

Other comparisons with Ling-3.1-flash-1019 or MiniMax-M2.5

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