Vercel said on Oct 19 that MiniMax M3.1 Flash is now available on its AI Gateway, free of charge until Oct 22. AI Gateway is a single service for calling many AI models. Vercel describes the model as open-weight, meaning its trained parameters can be downloaded. It handles several input types and is aimed at coding and agent work. It has a 1M-token context window, which is room for very long documents and multi-step agent sessions. Vercel said it improves on earlier MiniMax models in agent tasks, coding and cybersecurity.
The free rate holds only when MiniMax serves the request. Vercel said users must set the provider order in the gateway options to make sure of that. Once the offer ends, those pinned requests bill at MiniMax's standard rate. Vercel did not say what that rate is. The coding results come from MiniMax's own reports, and Vercel gave no independent test figures. Vercel also did not say what happens to requests that another provider serves during the free period.
For teams that build or buy software, this is a short, no-cost window to try the model on real work. Vercel says AI Gateway passes on provider prices with no markup and no platform fee, including for users who bring their own keys. Anyone who pins requests during the trial should plan for the paid rate after Oct 22.