# MiniMax API vs xAI API (Grok) (slim)

> xAI scores 71.7 (BB) to MiniMax's 55.3 (C) for llm inference. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/minimax-api-vs-xai-api.md (~6,800 tokens) · this version ~3,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/minimax-api-vs-xai-api.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/minimax-api-vs-xai-api
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

xAI API (Grok) scores 71.7 (BB) on agent readiness against MiniMax API's 55.3 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. MiniMax API leads on reliability. Both do llm inference.

- MiniMax API: C 55.3, rank #877 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/minimax-api.min.md
- xAI API (Grok): BB 71.7, rank #152 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/xai-api.min.md
- MiniMax API, good for Cheap long-context agent and coding calls through an Anthropic-compatible client, on data you can share with the vendor. Ahead on Reliability, 75 against 55.
- xAI API (Grok), good for Agents that want a capable model at a low per-token price with built-in web and X search, remote MCP and voice, and teams that need self-serve ZDR or US-only processing. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 88 against 82; Agent ergonomics, 90 against 59; Security & auth, 97 against 30; Maintenance & community, 77 against 45. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.

| Category | MiniMax API | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 75 | 55 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 82 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 59 | 90 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 30 | 97 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 45 | 77 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 65 | 63 |

| Fact (where they differ) | MiniMax API | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | MiniMax | SpaceXSI (xAI) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.minimax.io` | `https://api.x.ai/v1` |
| Licence | Proprietary API under MiniMax's platform terms. MiniMax-M3 and MiniMax-M3.1-Flash weights are on Hugging Face under the MiniMax community licence | Proprietary service under xAI's enterprise terms of service. The Python SDK is Apache-2.0 |
| Last release | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-10-27 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-10-27 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | yes |
| Popularity | 493 stars | 597 stars, 912k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, xAI API (Grok) +67: MiniMax API 30 (Model reading (credential, training, retention, operator visibility, programme). One bearer key per account on the pay-as-you-go side and a separate Subscription Key for M Plan, with no scopes found. MiniMax says it may disable keys that leak publicly (20 of 30). The terms, effective 30 March 2026 and unchanged on 4 November, say MiniMax may use input and generated content to provide, maintain, develop and improve its services, and no opt-out was found. The privacy policy says only that personal data isn't used for training to profile or target consumers (0 of 20). Data is kept as long as necessary for its purpose, with no period stated and no zero-retention route (5 of 15). A usage page and balance alerts, no audit log found (5 of 15). No security.txt on platform.minimax.io (404 again on 4 November) or api.minimax.io (per the 19 October check), and no bug bounty or certification found (0 of 20). Total 30.); xAI API (Grok) 97 (Model reading. Team API keys with ACLs per endpoint and per model, QPM and TPM caps, expiry, and create, rotate, disable and delete through the Management API, plus documented mTLS. GitHub secret scanning disables leaked keys and emails the owner (30). The security FAQ says SpaceXSI never trains on API inputs or outputs without explicit permission (20). Requests and responses are kept 30 days for abuse auditing, then deleted, and team admins can switch on zero data retention themselves, confirmed by an `x-zero-data-retention` header on every response (15). Console audit log and a Management API audit-events endpoint, plus optional per-key request logging (15). security.txt valid to 2027-06-29 with a HackerOne bug bounty and a separate safety contact for prompt-injection issues. SOC 2 Type 2 is claimed in the security FAQ with the reports behind an NDA in the trust centre, so 17 of 20. Remote MCP doesn't support `require_approval`, which the model checklist doesn't score but reviewers should see. New in October, a `guidelines` array lets the caller make the model decline nsfw, violence or profanity content, which the checklist doesn't score.)
- Maintenance & community, xAI API (Grok) +32: MiniMax API 45 (Model reading. MiniMax-M3.1-Flash shipped on 19 October 2026, dated on the model release page, which has no newer entry on 4 November (16 days, 30). No stated notice policy. The M2.5 and M2.7 families closed to new users on 19 October and retire on 18 November, 30 days later, and from 19 October M Plan and Token Plan requests to them are served by M3.1 Flash under the old names. We couldn't find when that notice was first posted, and the page carries the same notice on 4 November (3 of 12). Churn is high. M2.5 (February 2026) and M2.7 (March 2026) retire within nine months of release, M2.1 and M2 are already retired, and the model list still calls M2.5 and M2.7 retired on 4 November while the notice on the same page gives 18 November (2 of 8). A dated release page, support email addresses on the contact and model pages, a Discord server and GitHub issues on the model repositories. We didn't test whether they answer (10 of 15). No official SDK (0 of 15, 0 of 10). Total 45.); xAI API (Grok) 77 (Model reading. grok-imagine-image-quality and grok-imagine-image-pro retired on 2 November 2026 as announced in September, Grok Voice 3.0 and custom moderation controls in October, Grok 4.7 on 21 September (30). No minimum notice period found. Retirements come as dated migration guides, retired slugs redirect to a replacement rather than failing, billed at the replacement's price, and grok-voice-2.0 was deprecated in October with no end date (4 of 12). Shutdowns in the last 90 days with dates given in advance, `grok-voice-transcribe-1.0` on 2 October and `grok-imagine-image-quality` on 2 November (8 of 8). Release notes several times a month but dated only by month, support by email and a Discord #help channel, not tested. On xai-sdk-python a collaborator commented on 2 of the 16 most recent threads with replies, and most outside pull requests since 23 October are open without a maintainer reply (10 of 15, down from 12). The repository has CI, release and version-bump workflows (5 of 10). One current first-party SDK, `xai-sdk` 1.21.0 tagged on 23 October, Python only (10 of 15). Supported runtimes stated, Python 3.10 or later (10).)
- Agent ergonomics, xAI API (Grok) +31: MiniMax API 59 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Tool use on all three formats, with `tool_choice` on the Anthropic format only (17 of 20). No JSON Schema output mode documented on any format (0 of 15). Caching is automatic, with cache reads at a tenth of the input price on M3.1 Flash and a token-count endpoint for sizing a request (15). 1,000,000-token context and up to 524,288 output tokens (15). No batch API found (0). No official SDK. The docs point to the Anthropic and OpenAI SDKs and the AI SDK (0). Typed error bodies with a request id on the Anthropic format and a code table, though `stop_sequences` is ignored without an error (12 of 15). M3.1 Flash can't turn thinking off and defaults to the deepest `effort`, which costs output tokens unless the caller lowers it. Total 59.); xAI API (Grok) 90 (Model reading of the checklist (tool use, structured output, caching, context, batch, SDKs, errors). Function calling with parallel calls on by default and `tool_choice` of auto, required, none or a named function (20). Guaranteed structured outputs (15). Automatic prompt caching, cached input at 0.25x on grok-4.7 ($0.50 per million) and 0.16x on grok-4.3 (15). 500,000-token context on grok-4.7 and 1,000,000 on grok-4.3, 13 of 15 for the default model's 500K. The Batch API is now 20% off on grok-4.7, 4.6 and 4.5 as well as the older models, with batch requests outside the rate limits (10 of 10, up from 5 on 6 October). One first-party SDK, `xai-sdk` for Python, with the OpenAI SDKs and Vercel's AI SDK documented as alternatives (5 of 10). Status codes documented with fixes, no Retry-After header found (12 of 15).)
- Reliability, MiniMax API +20: MiniMax API 75 (Atlassian Statuspage at status.minimax.io with Large Language Models, Text-to-Speech and Video Generation components (20). Its history pages, re-read on 4 November, now cover the whole 90 days from 6 August. They list 212 incidents on the LLM component, every one titled 'Elevated errors on Large Language Models (LLM)' and labelled major, and none states a full outage. The longest ran 65 minutes (01:15 to 02:20 UTC on 20 October, 'We are currently investigating this issue' and then resolved), and the rest closed within the hour. This run reads elevated errors with no fuller scope as partial, so minor only, frequent as they are (20). The rate-limits page publishes 200 requests and 10,000,000 tokens a minute for M3.1 Flash and M3 (15). The Anthropic-format OpenAPI file documents 429 for rate limits and 529 as an overload that can be retried, and the error-code page says to retry later on 1002, 2064 and other codes, with no Retry-After header or backoff schedule found (10). No SLA found (0). M3.1 Flash and M3 are generally available (10). Total 75.); xAI API (Grok) 55 (Status page at status.x.ai with components for the global and US API endpoints, voice, the consumer apps and, since the Cursor merger, Cursor's services, with an RSS feed (20). The feed, read on 6 November, now holds 267 incidents back to 11 August, so the whole 90-day window is readable. On the API components there were high error rates on grok-4.6 and grok-4.5 from 21:57 to 23:28 UTC on 17 August (about 90 minutes) and a models outage on the global and US endpoints from 13:30 to 17:09 UTC on 3 September (about 3 hours 40 minutes), so several majors. A 26-minute datacenter outage across the API on 22 September, voice disruptions of 12 and 28 minutes on 10 September and 6 October, a 63-minute voice and Imagine degradation on 30 October and a 37-second model degradation on 24 October add to the record (0). Rate limits published per model and tier, grok-4.7 at Tier 0 is 150 requests a second and 50M TPM, with the per-second cap derived as RPM divided by 48 (15). The rate-limits page shows exponential backoff on 429, but no Retry-After header or overload guidance was found (10 of 15). No SLA found in the docs or llms.txt (0). The Responses API has been GA since September 2025 and grok-4.7 carries no preview label (10).)
- Schema & documentation, xAI API (Grok) +6: MiniMax API 82 (OpenAPI 3.1 files for the Anthropic Messages, OpenAI Chat Completions and OpenAI Responses endpoints, each listing MiniMax-M3.1-Flash and MiniMax-M3 (25). llms.txt indexes the docs, and each page is served as Markdown (10). Field descriptions say which model each setting applies to, such as `service_tier` not being supported on M3.1 Flash and `thinking: disabled` returning 400 there, and a compatibility table marks `top_k`, `stop_sequences`, `mcp_servers` and `container` as ignored (15 of 20). Enums for model, `effort`, `service_tier` and thinking type, with required fields marked. The OpenAI-format schema has no `tool_choice` or `response_format` (11 of 15). The Anthropic-format file documents typed errors for 400, 401, 403, 404, 413, 429, 500 and 529 with example bodies, and a page lists 45 error codes with a fix for each (the 19 October note counted 23; 2069, model no longer available, is among them on 4 November), but the OpenAI and Responses files document only 200 (11 of 15). A dated model release page with the 19 October entry as its newest on 4 November, while the API release notes still stop at 28 October 2025 (10 of 15). Total 82.); xAI API (Grok) 88 (OpenAPI 3.1 document at docs.x.ai/openapi.json, 39 paths and 205 schemas on 6 November, covering Responses, Chat Completions, files, images, videos and models. The batch endpoints documented in the REST reference still aren't in it (20 of 25, applied as for gemini-api's missing Interactions API). llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page, plus a docs MCP server (10). The models page says which model to use for code, chat, images, video and voice, and reference pages list each parameter. Reference not read in full (18 of 20). Structured outputs are guaranteed to match the schema for supported keywords, and tool arguments always conform with `strict` implicitly true (15). Examples in Python, JavaScript and curl on every guide. The debugging page lists status codes with fixes, but the cause cells for 400, 403, 404 and 415 are still empty (13 of 15). Release notes are grouped by month without day dates, and model slugs come as aliases and dated versions (12 of 15).)

| Task | MiniMax API | xAI API (Grok) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Research a product and write a sourced report | $0.22 | $21.76 |
| Build a small four-page website | $0.07 | $4.85 |
| Find and fix a bug in a large codebase | $0.02 | $1.07 |