MiniMax M3 vs Gemini 3.1 Pro (default)
Should you write with MiniMax M3 or Gemini 3.1 Pro (default)? 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. MiniMax M3 leads overall, 82.7 to 80.1.
The verdict
MiniMax M3 beats Gemini 3.1 Pro (default) for scripts, at a fraction of the price. It's #71 against #94, about 207 Elo ahead. The widest gap is Length Adherence, about eleven points, so Gemini's scripts miss the target size more often, and MiniMax also writes better visual cues. Gemini does win two metrics, YouTube structure and slop, but by less than half a point each. The price gap is big: an estimated $0.023 a script for MiniMax against $0.143, and MiniMax is open weights. Gemini is a bit faster, and if your stack is already built around Google's API, that convenience is the main reason to stay.
Pick MiniMax M3 for on-length scripts with better cues at a fraction of the price, with open weights.
Pick Gemini 3.1 Pro (default) when you're already on Google's API and a bit of speed matters more than the rest.
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 MiniMax M3, orange is Gemini 3.1 Pro (default), 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, Length Adherence does the most to put MiniMax M3 ahead: it leads there by 11.0 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. MiniMax M3 is ahead and it's also the cheaper one: Gemini 3.1 Pro (default) costs about 6.2x as much per script.
| MiniMax M3 | Gemini 3.1 Pro (default) | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall / 100 | 82.7 | 80.1 |
| Writing Elo | 1672 | 1465 |
| Score spread across drafts (± overall std) | 1.980 | 2.580 |
| Cost per script (USD) | 0.023 | 0.143 |
| Avg time per script (min) | 1.8 | 1.3 |
| Open weights | Yes | No |
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: MiniMax M3 · Gemini 3.1 Pro (default). The whole scoring pipeline is on the methodology page.
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