Kimi K3 (thinking) vs MiniMax M3
Should you write with Kimi K3 (thinking) or MiniMax M3? On this page the only thing that changes is the model. Both wrote their own version of the scripts behind 10 of my What's AI videos, five drafts per script, and three judges from three model families scored every draft blind, with my finished script as the reference. Kimi K3 (thinking) leads overall, 87.2 to 82.7.
The verdict
I'd pick Kimi K3 (thinking) for the writing and MiniMax M3 only for the bill. On the board it's #41 against #71, 426 Elo apart. Kimi wins eight of the nine metrics, and the gaps are widest on YouTube structure and continuity, about seven points each. MiniMax takes Length Adherence by a few points, so its scripts land closer to the target word count. It also costs about $0.023 a script against $0.095, roughly a quarter, though that MiniMax figure is an estimate. Both are open weights, and Kimi is the quicker of the two. If a human rewrites the drafts anyway, MiniMax stretches a budget further.
Pick Kimi K3 (thinking) when the script needs structure and flow you won't have to rebuild.
Pick MiniMax M3 when on-length drafts at a quarter of the price are worth a heavier rewrite.
How to read these numbers
Overall vs Elo. Overall is the weighted rubric score. Elo compares each model's five-draft average with every other model's, script by script, and counts gaps inside run-to-run noise as draws, so it rewards winning often and can disagree with overall. My own scripts score 90.9 on the same rubric, not a literal 100. Right now 2 of 167 ranked configurations reach it. A model above that line writes at that level on this rubric. That's not the same as beating my script line for line.
Reading the Elo intervals. Each 95% range comes from resampling every model's recorded run scores on each task and re-ranking. Comparing these separate ranges does not test the Elo gap between two models: far apart is strong evidence, and overlap isn't a tie. The tasks stay fixed, so the ranges say nothing about new tasks (the long version).
Metric by metric: where the gap comes from
Blue is Kimi K3 (thinking), orange is MiniMax M3, and the solid bar takes the metric. The weight under each name is how much it counts toward the overall. Weighted by how much each metric counts, Tone & Voice Match does the most to put Kimi K3 (thinking) ahead: it leads there by 5.1 points. If you care about one thing, say voice or length, go straight to that row.
Cost, speed, and consistency
Quality is half the decision. The other half is what each script costs you, how long you wait, and how often you get a bad draft. The lead has a price: Kimi K3 (thinking) costs about 4.1x as much per script as MiniMax M3.
| Kimi K3 (thinking) | MiniMax M3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall / 100 | 87.2 | 82.7 |
| Writing Elo | 2098 | 1672 |
| Score spread across drafts (± overall std) | 1.550 | 1.980 |
| Cost per script (USD) | 0.095 | 0.023 |
| Avg time per script (min) | 1.2 | 1.8 |
| Open weights | Yes | Yes |
Green wins the row, and for spread, cost and time, lower wins. Cost is one script at recorded list prices, uncached and without judging, so your real bill will differ. Spread is how much the overall score moves across a model's drafts, and time is the average time to get one accepted script, retries included.
Want the script-by-script detail? Full scorecards: Kimi K3 (thinking) · MiniMax M3. The whole scoring pipeline is on the methodology page.
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