Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) finish on the same overall score, so this is less about a single winner and more about where the edge shows up. The headline says tie; the benchmark table is where the real choice happens.

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) is the reasoning model in the pair, while Claude 3.5 Sonnet is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Claude 3.5 Sonnet gives you the larger context window at 200K, compared with 128K for Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Treat this as a split decision. Claude 3.5 Sonnet makes more sense if multimodal & grounded is the priority or you need the larger 200K context window; Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) is the better fit if mathematics is the priority or you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

55

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

58.5

54
Terminal-Bench 2.0
60
62
BrowseComp
61
51
OSWorld-Verified
55

Coding

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

37.8

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

35

57
HumanEval
62
36
SWE-bench Verified
39
39
LiveCodeBench
33
37
SWE-bench Pro
36

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

74.8

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

71.5

77
MMMU-Pro
71
72
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

67.7

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

69.2

63
SimpleQA
70
61
MuSR
70
83
BBH
80
70
LongBench v2
66
70
MRCRv2
66

Knowledge

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

50.8

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

52.1

65
MMLU
71
65
GPQA
70
63
SuperGPQA
68
61
OpenBookQA
66
74
MMLU-Pro
69
5
HLE
7
59
FrontierScience
62

Instruction Following

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

83

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

81

83
IFEval
81

Multilingual

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

80.5

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

77.8

85
MGSM
81
78
MMLU-ProX
76

Mathematics

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

71.2

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)

75.2

65
AIME 2023
73
67
AIME 2024
75
66
AIME 2025
74
61
HMMT Feb 2023
69
63
HMMT Feb 2024
71
62
HMMT Feb 2025
70
64
BRUMO 2025
72
80
MATH-500
79

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) are tied on overall score, so the right pick depends on which category matters most for your use case.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 52.1 versus 50.8. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 37.8 versus 35. Inside this category, LiveCodeBench is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 75.2 versus 71.2. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 69.2 versus 67.7. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning) has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 58.5 versus 55. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.8 versus 71.5. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Claude 3.5 Sonnet or Ministral 3 14B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.5 versus 77.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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