The closest alternative to DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus is Qwen3 Coder Next — comparable intelligence (28.3 vs 28.5); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M2.7 runs $0.250/M vs $0.270/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Qwen3 Coder Next is the closest alternative to DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus, with an Intelligence Index of 28.3 (DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus scores 28.5) at $0.110 per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M2.7 costs $0.250 per million input tokens versus $0.270 for DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to DeepSeek V3.1 Terminus — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.