abab5.5 / abab5.5s

// Overview

abab5.5 and abab5.5s are MiniMax's 2023 production-grade chat models, part of the abab family the Shanghai lab opened to developers through its MiniMax Open Platform (launched April 2023). abab5.5 was the workhorse Chinese-language text model behind MiniMax's early assistant and companion experiences, and contemporaneous user reports placed its writing, chatting, and question-answering quality at roughly the level of OpenAI's GPT-3.5.

abab5.5-chat exposed a combined input-plus-output limit of 16,384 tokens, while abab5.5s-chat was a smaller, lighter variant with an 8,192-token limit aimed at faster, lower-cost interactions. Both were proprietary, API-served models rather than open-weight releases. In the SuperCLUE October 2023 Chinese-LLM leaderboard, MiniMax-Abab5.5 placed around 10th with a total score of 59.57 (48.13 on the open multi-turn track, 76.72 on the objective-question track).

abab5.5 is the model line that powered MiniMax's breakout consumer apps of the period — the Glow chat app and its successors Talkie (international, June 2023) and Xingye / 星野 (China, September 2023). As the earliest abab generation tracked here, it marks the start of MiniMax's publicly documented lineage that later scaled to the 100B+ MoE abab6 (which MiniMax said fixed issues abab5.5 hit in complex scenarios) and the trillion-parameter abab6.5 series. The abab5.5 models have since been retired and no longer appear in MiniMax's current model list; this page preserves them as the foundation of the legacy abab line.

// Benchmarks

1. SuperCLUE total (Chinese LLM benchmark, Oct 2023)59.57%
2. SuperCLUE OPEN (multi-turn open, Oct 2023)48.13%
3. SuperCLUE OPT (objective questions, Oct 2023)76.72%

Scores on a 0–100 scale (25-point gridlines); higher is better. Each benchmark links to its published source.

// Strengths

• Among MiniMax's first publicly available production chat models (2023)
• Reached roughly GPT-3.5-level quality on writing, chat, and Q&A per contemporaneous reports
• Two tiers: abab5.5 (16K) for quality, lighter abab5.5s (8K) for speed and cost
• Powered MiniMax's breakout companion apps Talkie and Xingye
• Top-10 finish among Chinese LLMs on SuperCLUE's October 2023 leaderboard

// Best for

• Conversational assistants and companion-style chat apps (Talkie, Xingye)
• Lightweight, cost-sensitive chat via the smaller abab5.5s
• General Chinese-language text generation and dialogue
• Early API-based application prototyping on the MiniMax Open Platform

// How to access

// abab (legacy) — every version

The full lineage of the abab (legacy) line, newest first. Every version has its own page — click any to compare specs, benchmarks and pricing.