# MiniMax Video API vs Runway API

> Runway API has a score of 61.1 (C) against MiniMax Video API's 60.3 (C). Both do video generate. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 15 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Runway API has a score of 61.1 (C) against MiniMax Video API's 60.3 (C). Both do video generate. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 15 points.

- MiniMax Video API: grade C, 60.3/100, rank #249 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/minimax-video.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/minimax-video.json
- Runway API: grade C, 61.1/100, rank #232 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/runway.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/runway.json

## Which one, for what

Pick MiniMax Video API for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Runway API for reliability (+5), security & auth (+13), maintenance & community (+15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | MiniMax Video API | Runway API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 70 | 75 | Runway API +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 96 | 93 | MiniMax Video API +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 75 | MiniMax Video API +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 38 | 51 | Runway API +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 62 | Runway API +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 57 | MiniMax Video API +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **60.3 · C** | **61.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | MiniMax Video API | Runway API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | MiniMax | Runway |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.minimax.io` | `https://api.dev.runwayml.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MiniMax H3 Community License (weights) | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | 7 | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-08-21 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 9.4k stars, 334 npm/wk, 1.7k PyPI/wk | 20 stars, 56k npm/wk, 67k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**MiniMax Video API.** 2K with stereo audio at $0.13 a second, 768P at $0.08. No statement found on whether API inputs train models, and the privacy policy needs a browser.

**Runway API.** OpenAPI 3.1, llms.txt and Markdown copies of every docs page. Gen-3 Alpha Turbo and Gen-4 Aleph were removed on 2026-07-30 with no prior notice in the changelog.

## Before you call either

### MiniMax Video API

1. Use POST /v2/video_generation for H3 and poll GET /v2/query/video_generation/{task_id}. Tasks stay queryable for 7 days
2. Set `ratio` for text-to-video. `adaptive` isn't allowed there
3. Pass `callback_url` to skip polling. Your endpoint must echo the `challenge` within 3 seconds
4. A 402 means the balance is empty and a 422 means moderation blocked the content. Don't retry either unchanged

### Runway API

1. Send `X-Runway-Version: 2024-11-06` on every request or it fails
2. Use the SDK's wait-for-output helper or poll GET /v1/tasks/{id} until SUCCEEDED or FAILED
3. Don't retry a SAFETY.* failure unchanged. It's moderation, not an outage
4. Take model IDs from the models page, not memory. Two were removed without notice on 2026-07-30
5. Copy outputs to your own storage. URLs expire within 24 to 48 hours

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