Claude 3.5 Sonnet vs Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

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

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 60 to 31. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet's sharpest advantage is in multimodal & grounded, where it averages 74.8 against 30.4. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 77 to 25.

Ministral 3 3B (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 3B (Reasoning).

Quick Verdict

Pick Claude 3.5 Sonnet if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning) only becomes the better choice if you want the stronger reasoning-first profile.

Agentic

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

55

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

34

54
Terminal-Bench 2.0
33
62
BrowseComp
37
51
OSWorld-Verified
33

Coding

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

37.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

7.2

57
HumanEval
16
36
SWE-bench Verified
9
39
LiveCodeBench
8
37
SWE-bench Pro
6

Multimodal & Grounded

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

74.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

30.4

77
MMMU-Pro
25
72
OfficeQA Pro
37

Reasoning

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

67.7

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

35.3

63
SimpleQA
26
61
MuSR
26
83
BBH
63
70
LongBench v2
37
70
MRCRv2
40

Knowledge

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

50.8

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

25.2

65
MMLU
25
65
GPQA
24
63
SuperGPQA
22
61
OpenBookQA
20
74
MMLU-Pro
49
5
HLE
1
59
FrontierScience
29

Instruction Following

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

83

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

68

83
IFEval
68

Multilingual

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

80.5

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

59.7

85
MGSM
61
78
MMLU-ProX
59

Mathematics

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

71.2

Ministral 3 3B (Reasoning)

40.9

65
AIME 2023
27
67
AIME 2024
29
66
AIME 2025
28
61
HMMT Feb 2023
23
63
HMMT Feb 2024
25
62
HMMT Feb 2025
24
64
BRUMO 2025
26
80
MATH-500
59

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Claude 3.5 Sonnet is ahead overall, 60 to 31. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 77 and 25.

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

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 50.8 versus 25.2. Inside this category, GPQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 37.8 versus 7.2. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 71.2 versus 40.9. 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 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 67.7 versus 35.3. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

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

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 55 versus 34. Inside this category, BrowseComp 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 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 74.8 versus 30.4. 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 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83 versus 68. 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 3B (Reasoning)?

Claude 3.5 Sonnet has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 80.5 versus 59.7. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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