hy3 vs mimo-v2.5 vs deepseek v4 flash vs minimax m3

the four models on top of the openrouter leaderboard by tokens this week:

#1 hy3 (@TencentHunyuan) – 7.5t
#2 mimo-v2.5 (@XiaomiMiMo) – 6.56t
#3 deepseek v4 flash (@deepseek_ai) – 5.24t
#4 minimax m3 (@MiniMax_AI) – 4.21t

so we tested them. 3 prompts, single-file html, @threejs from a cdn, fully procedural, no external assets. all run via @aimlapi

each prompt is a transparent cutaway machine that has to be mechanically correct, not decorative:

• 4-stroke engine with full oil circulation – slider-crank kinematics, cam at 2:1, valve lift driven by lobes, oil loop from sump to gallery to big-end

• watt walking-beam steam engine – four-bar vector-loop closure, eccentric-driven slide valve, steam events synced to real port position

• francis reaction water turbine – 20 guide vanes on a regulating ring, 17 lofted runner blades, gpu particle advection, precessing vortex rope at part load

the takeaway up front: none of the four cleared all three scenes on the first attempt. but the price spread between them is roughly 70x – hy3 fixed included costs less than two cents

overall results (summed across all 3 scenes):

cost
#1 hy3 – $0.016
#2 deepseek v4 flash – $0.025
#3 mimo-v2.5 – $0.97
#4 minimax m3 – $1.17

tokens
#1 hy3 – 19,326
#2 deepseek v4 flash – 63,126
#3 mimo-v2.5 – 322,523
#4 minimax m3 – 702,900

lines of code
#1 hy3 – 1,047
#2 mimo-v2.5 – 2,759
#3 deepseek v4 flash – 3,273
#4 minimax m3 – 3,354

scenes needing a second attempt
#1 hy3 – 1 (engine)
#1 mimo-v2.5 – 1 (turbine)
#1 minimax m3 – 1 (turbine)
#4 deepseek v4 flash – 2 (steam engine, turbine)

observations:

1. the token spread is the real story – minimax burns 36x hy3's tokens and lands in the same place, one retry, ~3.3k lines

2. hy3 is the outlier on density: 1,047 lines total, fewest tokens, cheapest run, and only one scene needed a second pass. deepseek is the opposite trade – near-hy3 pricing but the most retries

3. mimo and minimax seem to overthink instead of writing the code. minimax spent 359.1k tokens on the steam engine and produced 1,346 lines – the tokens are going somewhere other than the file

4. the francis turbine broke three of the four. the spec that separates them is the one with 20 linked guide vanes and gpu particle advection, not the one with the most parts

overall impression:

none of these models excelled at any of the tasks we gave them. but they were close, and they were extremely cheap. the gap that matters isn't quality anymore – it's that hy3 ran all three scenes for less than two cents while the frontier labs charge dollars for the same work

right now you pick these because they're good for the zero price you pay. soon that's something openai and anthropic will have to think about