MiniMax makes M3.1 Flash generally available in its API (1M context, multimodal, five thinking-effort levels) and starts retiring M2.5/M2.7, routing plan users to the new model

Why it matters

【Key points】

Around midday on October 19 (Beijing time), MiniMax renamed MiniMax-M3.1-Flash-Preview to MiniMax-M3.1-Flash in its developer docs and listed it as a current flagship language model alongside M3, callable through both its Anthropic-compatible and OpenAI-compatible APIs. Since October 8 the model had been offered only as a preview to M Plan subscribers and MiniMax Code users.

Per the docs: natively multimodal (text, image and video input), 1M-token context, aimed at coding and agent work. Thinking is always on and cannot be disabled; depth is set with effort levels low, medium, high, xhigh and max (default max).

The previously announced transition also takes effect: the M2.5 and M2.7 families are closed to new users from October 19 and retire on November 18. From today, M Plan and Token Plan requests to M2.5/M2.7 are routed to M3.1 Flash, with old model names kept as aliases and plan allowances unchanged. Existing pay-as-you-go users can keep calling them until retirement.

【Verifiable】

Models and retirement notice: https://platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/models-intro

Chinese docs: https://platform.minimaxi.com/docs/guides/models-intro

Usage guide: https://platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/text-generation

【Our read】

1. A docs-only launch: so far there is no launch post, official social post, benchmark numbers or pay-as-you-go price, and the Token Plan page still says "Preview". Wait for MiniMax on performance and pricing.

2. The biggest practical change is silent routing: plan users calling M2.5/M2.7 names now get a different model, so output style, thinking-token use and latency may shift. Apps that rely on fixed behavior should re-test.

3. No open weights: MiniMax's newest language model on Hugging Face is still June's M3, so M3.1 Flash is API-only for now.